As a family, we decided that we wanted to reduce/eliminate the use of Christmas wrapping paper. I was getting sick of the amount of discarded wrapping paper that went into the bin after all the presents had been unwrapped on Christmas morning.

So I came up with the idea of some personalised Santa sacks for the family. Sacks that had a fun applique design and their name on the front, large and sturdy enough to hold several gifts and that would look decorative under the tree.

The sacks are easy to make, and the applique can be either be stitched by hand using Blanket Stitch, or as I have done, free motion applique on the machine. Either technique would look great, I guess it depends on how much time you have to do the hand stitching – free motion applique is so much quicker (& easy to do).

In designing these sacks, I thought about how I wanted the pattern to be written. I wanted to have the option of different designs for the front but did not think it was economical to repeat the actual sack construction in EVERY design pattern. Hence the MASTER SACK pattern. You will NEED this pattern to make the sack up and it gives the instructions on how to do the applique. The DESIGN patterns are ADD-ONS. So basically you will NEED the Master Sack pattern and then purchase the Design Patterns that you wish.

I will be adding to the range of Design fronts over time, so to come back and check out our new designs from time to time.