I knitted an aghan for my niece for a wedding present. As I had to send it to her, I made a pillowcase,too. She really liked the pillowcase so when she has to store it, it has a special place.

I have done this for years. Children love to get a gift wrapped in Newspaper Comics. Besides that, when you are a single mother and money is tight, the cost is very inespensive.

I purchased some plain brown paper 10 mts about $4 months ago , and everytime the little ones come over we roll it out on the kitchen bench and drawn on it , play O & X on it , draw around our hands and have to draw bling it them , we have had so much fun , this is what I will wrap there christmas goodies in , and there are wonderful memories on it . Cathy

OOOOH...what wonderful idea. Thank you for asking the questions and to all the wonderful answers. I too hate using and wasting all that paper. Since i have little ones we give gifts in bags and ask the recipient to please reuse for another child.

I make reusable/reversible gift sacks. They have batting in them and I use a cord or ribbon to tie. It's like opening Santa's sack on christmas.

I love the idea of wrapping in a pillowcase! My oldest daughter like to make dresses for my youngest by cutting arm holes and a neck hole into all our pillowcases....so I can never have enough pillowcases.

Some good ideas here:

http://tipnut.com/wrap-up/

Here's a thought---------buy some sale fabrics and wrap gifts (to be opened at your house) in fabric that you can reclaim and use later.

Or make gift bags from fabrics.

LOL, I delight in taking ABC's bag into XYZ's store.

Now to practical--------I've made probably a hundred shopping bags from rummage sale pants and skirts. Some very pretty.

Have also made a couple dozen pillowcases-----but they are mostly gifts unto themselves.

http://www.allpeoplequilt.com/projec...terns_ss1.html

Here are a lot of bag ideas with instructions.