Making a Potpourri Sachet

Another rather sweet idea for Valentines Day is to make potpourri sachets to either hang in your wardrobe or simply to place within drawers of clothes. These sachets can of course be heart shaped (keeping to the theme) but you could chose any shape you like. I have made some heart shaped bags both to hang and simply as little cushions to place amongst clothes or wherever.

I have got to say that at first you might say this is a girly thing but I have found many men also like them. My husband, for one, has a lavender sachet in his car, which he says beats any car deodoriser you can buy because it doesn’t have that awful chemical smell.

To make these sachets you will need:

• Potpourri - select your own fragrance ~ lavender or rose are a good choice) 
• Fabric – either new or remnants from other craft projects or recycled fabric clothes or household linens. Also use plain or small patterns they are simply more effective.
• Thread
• Pins
• Sewing machine (though hand sewing is just as good if slower.
• Polyester fibre
• Template heart or other shape
• Ribbon

The Fabric chosen

 

For my sachets I used fabric left over from my Valentines bunting and some other bits I had from previous sewing projects. I also created my own template using a heart shape I downloaded from clip art, bit of a cheat but if it works, why make it hard?

To make sachets:

• Using the template of your choice draw outlines of the shapes onto the fabric you can use a pencil pen or tailors chalk. Take care to ensure you have any patterns the correct way up on the fabric 

Templates can be any shape but I selected hearts to keep with the theme

• Cut out shapes

Take care cutting out the shape. Note you can use pinking shears to prevent fraying

• Place shapes with right sides facing pin and tack using a seam allowance of approximately 3mm, Note if you want to use a hanging ribbon this should be inserted prior to tacking up the sachet.

Seam allowance of aproximately 2.5cms

Note insert ribbon before tacking sides together

• Once tacked together sew either by hand or machine leaving a gap of approximately 2.5cms to enable the sachet to be tuned the correct way out and for inserting stuffing.

• Once sachet has been turned the correct way, carefully insert stuffing and potpourri. Do not over stuff.

Add stuffing and potpourri

• When the shape is fully padded out and the potpourri inserted then sew the remaining 2.5 cm of the seam up take care to make this neat.You have now made your potpourri sachet.

   

Some I made earlier

You can also make square shapes and still have the Valentines theme

 

Of course you could make these sachets as big as you like, indeed they could even become small cushions, but that's an idea for another time.