Julie Finn
Here’s a bit of kitchen decor that’s also useful–a vintage cornmeal sack that’s secretly a sachet!
You can make this reusable sachet from a flour sack, or even burlap or cheesecloth, but a vintage cornmeal sack is easier to find in just the right, smaller size that will let you show off the entire thing. I was even able to save the entire recipe on the back of this particular cornmeal sack, just in case I get a hankering for skillet cornbread.
The most useful part of this sachet, however, is the button closure at the top. This means that you can refresh the scent whenever you’d like, with a few drops of essential oil on a cotton ball, or fresh or dried herbs from your garden. My favorite essential oil blend for the kitchen is what is probably a weird combination of peppermint and pine, but I’m told that lemon will work as a kitchen odor eliminator, and I think that tea tree oil makes a room smell clean.
To make your own vintage cornmeal sack kitchen sachet, here’s what you’ll need:
vintage cornmeal sack. Double check that you’re not about to craft with something truly valuable, but generally, vintage cornmeal sacks, especially any that have a few stains, like the one that I used, aren’t at all spendy.
vintage buttons. I used a mismatched set of ivory buttons from my button stash.
sewing supplies and thread. You can sew the buttons on by hand, but I have never met anyone who preferred hand-sewing buttonholes to using the buttonhole foot on a sewing machine.
wire. Jewelry wire, about the length of your hand, is what you’ll use to hang your finished sachet.
batting. You’ll lightly stuff your sachet, so use anything that you like for that.
1. Iron and fold down the top of the cornmeal sack. Iron the cornmeal sack flat (you’ve washed it already, right?), and then fold the top down to the inside of the sack, until you’ve achieved the vertical dimensions that you want for the finished sachet. Adjust it on top of a gridded cutting mat, to make sure that everything is aligned.
Iron again to crease the fold.
2. Place the buttons. Choose the buttons and their placement, marking the front of the sack with washable tailor’s chalk.
Use the marks to sew buttonholes in the front of the sack, then sew the buttons to match them on the back, with the buttons on the inside. You should then be able to button the sack closed.
3. Add a wire hanger. Bend one end of the wire around each of the buttons at either end of the sack. When you button the sack, the wire ends won’t show.
4. Lightly stuff the cornmeal sack. Use whatever batting you’d like to lightly stuff the sack, giving it a little dimension. You don’t want it super puffy, but it should look like there’s something in there.
5. Add the scent. Use whatever you want for scent–potpourri, essential oils, etc.–then button up the sack to enclose it.
6. Hang the sachet. Hammer a nail into your wall, then hang your new vintage cornmeal sack kitchen sachet from its wire. It should be light enough that you can adjust the wire to look pretty.
And now you have a new, useful decoration! Refresh the scent as you’d like, and if you also want to use that space to hide candy from your kids…
Well, I won’t tell!
