Do-It-Yourself Gift Wrapping Scheme. How to Master the Japanese Technique of Wrapping Things?

Furoshi­ki is the Japan­ese art of wrap­ping things in cloth. It is not known exact­ly when it appeared. But on engrav­ings dat­ed to the 2nd cen­tu­ry A.D. e., there are already images of women car­ry­ing bun­dles of fab­rics on their heads. Furoshi­ki bag analogs are found in many cul­tures, but only in Japan this hob­by has gained such scope. The stage of great­est devel­op­ment occurred in the 7th-8th cen­turies AD. e.

The word “furoshi­ki” itself can be trans­lat­ed as “mat for going to the bath.” They took a rug with them to stand on it when chang­ing into a bathing kimono, they wrapped a street kimono and a bathing kimono after water pro­ce­dures in it. Over time, pieces of fab­ric began to be used to car­ry var­i­ous items. And although now there is no prac­ti­cal need for this art, it con­tin­ues to be pop­u­lar both in Japan and in oth­er coun­tries of the world.

This art can be applied in four cas­es:

1. when you need to move some­thing;
2. when you need to wrap a gift beau­ti­ful­ly;
3. when you need to pack some­thing to save the item;
4. for home and table dec­o­ra­tion.

In order to trans­fer some­thing, you can roll your bag over your shoul­der or to car­ry it in your hands. It may be a bag to car­ry it on the head, although this is now rarely seen. A hang­ing fab­ric bag for car­ry­ing a child in front can also be made using this tech­nique.

And although such an acces­so­ry will look very unusu­al, you need to remem­ber that if you need to get a thing out of the bag, you will need to com­plete­ly or par­tial­ly untie it. And if you need to col­lect prod­ucts from the store in such a bag, for exam­ple, you will need a sep­a­rate place for this. This is not very con­ve­nient in the real­i­ty of the Euro­pean way of life. Although for fash­ion­able stu­dents, such a bag will be an excel­lent alter­na­tive to heavy frame bags. It is worth con­sid­er­ing in advance which scheme to use.

Even the most unsight­ly gift will look good in a beau­ti­ful fab­ric wrap­per. Rigid, soft or flow­ing fab­rics will cre­ate a unique wrap. For this pur­pose, bright can­vas­es with pat­terns are usu­al­ly used. Over many cen­turies of devel­op­ment of this art, pack­ag­ing schemes for any form have accu­mu­lat­ed. For exam­ple, for bot­tles (one, two or even three), books, rec­tan­gu­lar and square objects, dish­es, sou­venirs or flors.

And also this tech­nique is used when you need to save some­thing for a long time. It is worth say­ing that one of the rea­sons for the appear­ance of this art was pre­cise­ly the need to pre­serve food. Unlike Euro­pean res­i­dents, the Japan­ese did not need to store food for a long time. Food could be obtained all year round, so food was not stored for more than 3–4 days. Some ana­logue of this pur­pose of furoshi­ki can be the habit of our grand­moth­ers to wrap clothes and objects in cloth before putting them away for stor­age.

Furoshi­ki is used not only for pack­ing items dur­ing trans­porta­tion, but also for dec­o­rat­ing your own home. For exam­ple, when dec­o­rat­ing bot­tles, vas­es, floor lamps. The dec­o­ra­tion of flor pots and kitchen uten­sils in fab­ric deserves spe­cial men­tion. In addi­tion, the Japan­ese prac­tice wrap­ping sets and sets. In addi­tion, each can­dy must be wrapped in a sep­a­rate flap. Fruit may be packed togeth­er.

There are no restric­tions on the mate­ri­als used in furoshi­ki. It all depends sole­ly on the desire of the design­er and the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. In Japan, bright fab­rics are very fond of, which they use for needle­work. We give gen­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions for the most com­mon cas­es.

To cre­ate bags, it is best to use durable, dense, but not very heavy fab­rics. Batiste, Ben­galin, velor, gabar­dine and sta­ple fab­rics are suit­able. As ll as jacquard and diag­o­nal mate­r­i­al. Such mate­ri­als are char­ac­ter­ized by light­ness, ar resis­tance, sim­plic­i­ty. It is also impor­tant that they almost do not change their shape, which means that a piece of fab­ric will last longer. The mate­r­i­al can be plain or pat­terned depend­ing on your style of cloth­ing.

There are no restric­tions in mate­ri­als for dec­o­rat­ing a house, in gen­er­al. But it is rec­om­mend­ed not to use fleecy fab­rics such as vel­vet, velor, cor­duroy, as they will col­lect dust and lint. For small items, it is bet­ter to use fab­rics with a high drape char­ac­ter­is­tic. For exam­ple, cam­bric, sta­ple, chif­fon, silk and Madon­na.

In order to pack an item “in a long box”, you can use both old sheets and spe­cial­ly pur­chased fab­ric. Suit­able for cot­ton, linen and chif­fon fab­rics.

In order to pack a gift, it is rec­om­mend­ed to take pat­terned, loose mate­ri­als. This is dic­tat­ed by the fact that if it is planned to make a han­dle when pack­ing a small item, then it will be eas­i­er to do it from soft and thin mate­ri­als. If you do not plan to leave han­dles and knit large knots, then there are no restric­tions on mate­ri­als. Silk, cam­bric, jacquard, vel­vet, chif­fon, guipure, vis­cose, velor, satin and poly­ester are ll suit­ed.

The size of the seg­ment can be any con­ve­nient. Tra­di­tion­al­ly in Japan, square pieces of fab­ric re used with sides of 48 cm, 52 cm, 70 cm, 100–105 cm, 128 cm, 174 cm, 195 cm.

Here are some exam­ples of how you can diver­si­fy your life with the help of a piece of fab­ric and the tech­nique of wrap­ping objects.

We need a piece of mate­r­i­al diag­o­nal­ly equal to three times the length of one bot­tle.

1. We fold the bot­tles so that the necks look at dif­fer­ent angles of the same diag­o­nal, and there is a gap of 7–8 cm beten the bot­toms.
2. We twist the “roll” of fab­ric with the “stuff­ing” of the bot­tles.
3. Fold in half so that the bot­tles are next to each oth­er. Tie a knot from the cor­ners above the necks.

Con­sid­er how to quick­ly fold a bag (for exam­ple, let’s take a stu­dent ver­sion with books):

1. need a seg­ment so that four book widths fit in the diag­o­nal;
2. will divide all the books into two parts, and put them along the edges of the seg­ment;
3. now let’s wrap the remain­ing cor­ners (clos­est to them) on them and fold them again so that the cov­ers are com­plete­ly hid­den under the fab­ric, and the books them­selves are near­by;
4. shift each free end of the can­vas to the oppo­site side;
5. turn the struc­ture over, tie the free ends of the can­vas with a knot at the height need.

How to pack a stack of linens for stor­age:

1. spread the mate­r­i­al in 3 stack heights;
2. put a stack in the cen­ter;
3. alter­nate­ly tie diag­o­nal­ly oppo­site ends of the mate­r­i­al;
4. tuck the hang­ing “ears” inward to com­plete­ly hide the stack.

With the help of furoshi­ki, you can beau­ti­ful­ly wrap a round­ed object (for exam­ple, a case):

1. choose such a piece of fab­ric so that it is equal to two lengths of the case;
2. put the case on one of the cor­ners, and wrap the “roll”;
3. wrap the cor­ners stick­ing out of the case so that the end of the “roll” does not fall out;
4. form a beau­ti­ful knot or bow.

Furoshi­ki is a beau­ti­ful tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art that will help bring har­mo­ny and beau­ty to life.

For infor­ma­tion on how to wrap a gift using the furoshi­ki tech­nique, see the fol­low­ing video.