DIY Fabric Christmas Crackers

For week three of the Sew Early for Christmas Blog Hop, it was Joy over at Days Filled with Joy whose turn it was to share a tutorial to help you get an early start on your holiday gift and home decor making. Her Fabric Christmas Crackers are a super simple and easy sewing project.

These DIY Fabric Christmas Crackers would be a great first sewing project for a beginner sewist. Two hems, one seam and they’re done.

They’d also be a super quick project to make if you’re hosting a Christmas party and want something different and a little more eco-friendly than traditional Christmas crackers.

So head on over to Joy’s blog for the Fabric Christmas Crackers Tutorial and then pop back here because I’m going to show you some fun ideas for fillers.

DIY Fabric Christmas Crackers Fillers

Before we get to the Christmas Crackers Fillers, I thought I’d share a quick tip.

After sewing the Christmas Crackers you’re going to want to give them a quick press before inserting the paper tube. One of my favorite and handiest of pressing tools is a Dritz sleeve pressing roll but it’s too big to be any use for pressing small tubes like these.

A simple solution though is to roll up a facecloth and insert it into the tube as pictured below.

This easy do-it-yourself pressing roll can be used to press the seam open before turning the Fabric Christmas Cracker tube right side out and then reinserted to smooth out any wrinkles created when turning the tube.

Once you’ve got it pressed, it’s time to insert the paper tube and fill it.

Candy is the first thing that came to my mind when choosing inexpensive fillers. Packages of Jelly Bellies fit perfectly when folded in half lengthwise.

Regular sized candy bars are also the perfect fit.

Now you may want to go with something handmade, like these chocolate dipped pretzels.

Or you could buy sweets in bulk in seasonal colors such as these soft raspberry gummies.

Or if you want to really impress your guests, stop by your local chocolate shop and pick up a selection of truffles.

Wilton pretzel bags work well to package the candy and chocolates.

And if you just happen to have one or two extra truffles left over, no one but you will know if you treat yourself while filling the Fabric Christmas Crackers. 🙂

Having all your girlfriends over for a pre-Christmas brunch… add some bling to the crackers along with the chocolate truffles.

Wouldn’t this also be an elegant way to wrap a gift of jewelry for a special someone!

If you’ve got children coming over that you want to give a small gift to, dinky cars drive right in. The Christmas Cracker can be used for a temporary parking garage while they’re visiting.

And children of all ages will love these bubble wands.

If you ever want to see a bunch of adults rediscover their inner child, give them a bubble wand and watch what happens. 🙂

Looking for fun teacher gifts that you know will get used and not stuck on a shelf somewhere to gather dust?

Purchase a package of multi-color pens or sharpies, tie a ribbon around them to hold them together and slip them into a Christmas cracker.

As you can see from the photo above, these Fabric Christmas Crackers needed to be longer so that the pens and sharpies would fit.

For the tube inserts, measure and then cut a paper towel tube in half.

The cut tubes are about 2 inches longer than the toilet paper tubes used for the other Christmas crackers and slightly bigger around which meant that the fabric needed to be cut at 6¼” X 12″ instead of the 6″ X 10″ that was used for other Fabric Christmas Crackers. (As Joy mentions in her tutorial, be sure to measure whatever paper tubes you’re using, then cut your fabric accordingly.)

If you’re having a dinner party where there will be after dinner drinks, sew up a bunch of matching Fabric Christmas Crackers and insert a miniature bottle of Baileys into each. (You can go back to using the toilet paper tubes for these ones.)

Even the slightly taller miniature bottles of Kahlua fit inside.

I hope this has given you lots of ideas for fillers.

So start collecting toilet paper and paper towel rolls to make these easy sew DIY Fabric Christmas Crackers.

You may even want to collect a whole bunch of toilet paper rolls so you can also make Christmas Party Favors filled with leftover Halloween candy.

Have you ever made your own Christmas crackers? What did you fill them with?

You won’t want to miss the other three Sew Early for Christmas tutorials:

On Monday, July 9th, I showed you how to make a Quilted Christmas Wreath Pillow Cover.

Pam from Threading My Way posted her Drawstring Gift Bag with Divider ~ Nail Polish Bag ~Tutorial on July 16th.

If you want to see my versions of Pam’s tutorial click through for helpful hints and lots of suggestions for what to fill the Drawstring Gift Bags with.

And then on the 30th of July, Dione over at Clever Chameleon Quilting shared her Snow Globe Coaster Tutorial.

Be sure to save this post so you can find it again when you want to make DIY Fabric Christmas Crackers by clicking on the Pinterest button underneath this post.

And of course, I’d love it if you shared it on Twitter and Facebook as well. 🙂

I would be so pleased if you chose to share by clicking on one of the buttons below!