**update: you can find these Lavender Sachets on my etsy store as well!  I will create custom sachets just for you!**

For our wedding, I wanted to do favors that people would remember that also showed off a little bit of who we are.  My mom was a HUGE part in getting these done, but they reflect my style and a little bit of the homemade/homegrown elements that Mike and I love to do and share with others.  We made lavender sachets for every guest at the reception and hand tied them with notes thanking each of the guests for being a part of our special day.  The lavender smelled amazing in the reception room, and we had many guests (even one of my best guy friends) want more of them after the wedding.  I hope you enjoy my little tutorial on how we made each of these sachets.

Image from Todd Studios Photography

What you will need:

Fabric of whatever design/colors that incorporate your wedding scheme – 10 yards of fabric will make about 270 sachets of this size

Long Grain Rice

Sewing Machine and thread to match the colors of your fabric

Lavender Buds – 4-5 pounds of lavender buds will make about 270 sachets of this size

Stockpot for Lavender/Rice mixture

Measuring Cup

Funnel

Straight Pins

Below are the different fabrics that my Mom and I bought early in the Spring.  I love bright fun colors and patterns and these matched our colors perfectly and brought a summer/spring feel to a time of year that notoriously could have been freezing.  I think the fabrics worked their wonders because on November 7th, 2009, the weather was 80 degrees and absolutely beautiful.

You’ll want to buy lavender in bulk if you are planning on making a fair number of these.  I bought my bulk lavender from Winding Brook Estate that is just outside of St. Louis.  The below bag is about two and a half pounds of lavender buds, and it will go very far when you are mixing that with the long grain rice.  I bought five pounds of lavender buds all together, and have about a pound to a pound and a half leftover of the lavender buds.

How much lavender you need or that is left over will all depend on your ratio of mixing the lavender to the rice.  My test run in the beginning had started with 1/4 of a cup of lavender buds to a cup of rice, but as I started making the sachets in bulk, I mixed by the pot with a 60/40 ratio of rice to lavender buds.

Each of the fabric squares were hand sewn by my mom and then filled by yours truly.  You could do any shape or size that you wanted, but we wanted to do a little pillow size so it was a convenient size for everyone to take home.  Each had about an inch opening left after sewing the squares together on the sewing machine so you could fill them with the mixture.   Using the funnel, you fill each of the sachets all the way to the very opening of the pillow.  You then take a straight pin to close the opening until you have time to hand sew the opening together to finish off the pillow.

Making the stockpot of the mixture will make about 40-50 sachets at a time.  Then using the colored thread you bought that matches the fabric, you can whip stitch the closing.

Last step to finishing the sachets is to tie little tags onto each of the pillows with ribbon.  We used pink ribbon on the green fabric and green ribbon on the pink fabric to tie both colors together on the table.  If anyone is interested in the exact size of the pillow as well as my template for the paper tags, please email me at katie {at} simplyandforever {dot} com.  I would be happy to share!

Here’s a peek at the table from above!

Image from Todd Studios Photography