easy DIY lavender sachets to save your wool

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Learn how to sew easy DIY lavender sachets from items you have around your house to protect your yarn and knits from moths.

Since I started knitting over ten years ago I have accumulated so many wool items: yarn, knitted sweaters, hats, scarves, a drawer full of socks, wool, and roving for spinning. 

So far I have been lucky and have not had any insect damage but I don’t want my luck to run out. I have noticed so many moths around the house and want to keep them away from all of my wool. 

Certain types of moths like to lay their eggs on wool. When the baby moths hatch they find a tasty wool snack. If you’ve ever had a sweater full of holes, this is probably the cause. 

Luckily for us knitters, moths are not a fan of lavender scent, but it is many people’s favorite scent. 

Our lavender shrub was recently trimmed so this seemed like the perfect time to beef up my wool defense. 

A great sewing project for everyone

These easy DIY lavender sachets are a great project for sewists, whether you are just learning to sew or have been sewing for years. They also make great gifts.

If you are new to sewing, these fabric sachets make a great first project. There are only a few seams, quick to make, and these are easily made by hand or by machine. It is also great practice for French seams. 

For seasoned sewists, this is a great way to use up fabric scraps and other leftover bits. You probably have everything you need to make them on hand already!

What you’ll need

There aren’t a lot of items needed to make these homemade lavender sachets. There is an endless variety of options for what you can use! 

Materials

Pieces of fabric

You don’t need much fabric to make these sachets. Each bag only needs a 6in x 6in square of fabric. 

You can use just about any fabric you like! I recommend using woven, non-stretch fabric to make construction easier. Cotton fabric works great! Avoid anything with holes or a weave so loose it won’t hold the lavender flowers or rice. 

I went through my scraps of fabric and found several different fabrics to use and make a variety of sachets.

If you are new to sewing and haven’t built up a pile of fabric scraps you still have a ton of options! Old worn-out clothes or linens are a great source of scrap fabric. You could also check out the fat quarter options at your local fabric store. Quilting cotton is a great fabric choice for these sachets. 

Thread

You will need some thread to sew everything together. It can coordinate with your fabric, or be completely different. Only a little bit will show on the outside of the sachet, so use whatever you have. 

Ribbon or string

You will need something to tie your sachets closed. It can be ribbon, string, yarn, or old shoelaces! 

Dried lavender flowers

Without lavender, you can’t have a lavender-scented sachet. If you have a lavender bush growing near by, you can cut off the stalks and let the lavender blooms dry out for a few days. Then you can easily pull off the flowers and collect them in a small bowl to fill your own lavender sachet.

Depending on where you live it may not be easy to get lavender locally. If you don’t have any lavender plants near you, or there are no flowers on your plants, you can easily buy dried lavender flowers online. 

Uncooked rice (optional)

Depending on how much lavender you want to put in each sachet you may want some uncooked rice to bulk up each bag. Avoid using brown rice as it can go rancid. 

Essential Oil (optional)

You can increase the fragrance by adding a few drops of lavender essential oil to each bag. You could even make lavender sachets with just rice and lavender essential oil if you don’t have access to the dried buds. 

You can also refresh old lavender sachets by adding some fresh lavender essential oil. 

Additional Tools

Scissors

Pen for marking fabric

Sewing machine or sewing needle

Iron and ironing board

Funnel or piece of paper(optional)

Cutting out the fabric

The first step to sew these DIY lavender sachets is to cut out your, fabric. For each bag you’ll want about a 6in x 6in square. 

Don’t worry too much about these being precise. Since these will be tucked into drawers and closets, they don’t need to look perfect. If your fabric is a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, it will still turn out just fine. 

Sewing the Sachet

Finishing the top edge

First, fold down the top edge of your fabric square toward the back of the fabric twice, about ¼ to ½ an inch each fold. Ironing down the fabric between each fold keeps everything nice and neat. A couple of pins also help keep everything in line. 

Sew down this fold to secure the top hem. If you are sewing by machine, you can top stitch this with a straight stitch, like I’ve done.

If you are hand sewing your sachet, you can top stitch this down with a running stitch or back stitch, or you can whip stitch the edge down on the inside. 

Close the side and bottom

With the top edge secure, fold one side of the bag over to meet the other, with the right side of the fabric facing out. Add a few straight pins to keep the sides and bottom together.

It may seem strange to have the right sides facing out at this point but we will be making French seams to make sure the little bags are secure and no lavender escapes. 

Next, sew an L-shaped seam that goes across the bottom of the bag and closes the open side. This seam should be close to the edge of the fabric, about ¼ inch. Be careful that it is not so close to the edge that the fabric frays and the seam pulls out. 

Again, this can be sewn either by hand or machine. 

Tip for sewing right angles on a sewing machine: when you reach the point where you want the seam to turn, stop sewing with the needle through the fabric and lift the presser foot. Then you can easily turn the fabric to the new direction you want to sew. Then just lower the presser foot and keep sewing!

Protect the raw edges

Trim away any extra thread and turn the bag inside out so that the back of the fabric is outside. 

Iron down the seam you just sewed so that it lays flat. 

Repeat sewing the L-shaped seam only this time sew with a deeper seam allowance so it encases the raw edge from the first seam. 

Once this seam is complete, turn the bag out one more time and you will have a cute little bag with strong seams and no raw edges. 

Adding the lavender

The last thing to do is fill your DIY lavender sachet. You get to make your own lavender mixture using dry lavender and rice. I aimed for about one part rice, and one part lavender. You can even do all one or the other. 

You can carefully fill your sachet by hand. If you have a small funnel with a wide enough mouth, that would be super useful. You could even improvise a funnel with the top of a water bottle or milk jug.

I went even simpler and folded a piece of cardstock in half and used that to fill each bag. 

If you want to add any extra scent, now is the time to add a few drops of essential oil.

All that’s left is to close the top of the sachet. Using about 10in of ribbon or string or whatever you have lying around, tightly tie a square knot above the top of the level of the filling. Then you can tie a bow to make it pretty if you like. 

Tying off these lavender bags instead of sewing them shut makes it easier to refill or refresh them over time if the scent gets too weak.

Sewing a lot of sachets fast!

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have a lot of wool. It is all over my house in all kinds of places and I don’t want moths to get to any of it. To protect all of my wool I needed a lot of lavender sachets!

If you want to make a bunch of these at once there are a few things you can do to be more efficient. 

First, don’t make each bag individually. Instead, do each step for each bag like an assembly line. Cut out all of your squares of fabric at once. Iron and pin all of the top edges, one right after the other. Sew all the seams back to back. This will save you so much time!

Another great way to save time if you are sewing with a sewing machine is to sew the seam on each bag back to back. 

When you finish the seam on the first bag, immediately feed in the next piece of fabric without cutting the fabric. This will save you time and thread! 

All you have to do is cut the bags apart when you have finished sewing all of them. Just be sure to secure the thread at the beginning and end of each bag so the stitching doesn’t fall apart when the bags are separated. 

I was able to sew up a dozen small bags in a couple of hours using the assembly line method!

Now you can protect your wool!

I have tucked all of these finished sachets away wherever I have wool. Hopefully, no moths will want to get anywhere near my yarn! I tucked these away in my sock drawer, my sweater cabinet, and my yarn baskets.

If you want to see more sewing projects, click here.

How do you protect your wool? Let me know in the comments below!