Years ago when my kids were young, I was frustrated at seeing them destroy the beautiful and expensive gift wrap paper I had purchased from their school fundraiser. Budget was tighter then but I managed to hit the after Christmas sale at a local craft store. I purchased that year and the next two years all I could afford in fabric after Christmas. All Christmas fabrics. I serged lots an lots of bags of all sizes for our Christmas presents. My thoughts were always to buy beautiful gold cord to tie around them...but that never happened. Instead my BH and I would wrap Christmas presents as we purchased them thru the year in these bags, label them and close them with large postal rubber bands and sale tags with string upon them. We reused the labels and rubber bands each year. Well many years have passed and we celebrate with less bags today, as in those days...but here is what I am in the process of doing.
A small group of 20 quilters exchanged blocks of different sized for over 2 years with each other. All these blocks are really beautiful and many of them appliqued. But I swapped for for two people which meant I would receive 40 blocks back. Now I am in the process of cutting up many of our Christmas sacks and adding the different 40 blocks to make my four grown children their own Christmas Quilts. Hope to have the project finished in 2011. If I do, I will post the four different quilts! And yes, I have quilted several quilts made from the exchanged blocks and they are very, very beautiful!