Procrastinators including your columnist know all too well this feeling of futility and wastefulness:

It’s Christmas morning and the gift wrap you’ve painstakingly shopped for and wrapped around your family’s gifts — sometimes mere hours before they get opened — winds up filling garbage bags.

"I’d just spent money on (the gift wrap) and now we’re throwing it all away," lamented Stacy Uyehara.

That was one of the motivations that drove her to invent her now-patented M’doridori line of furoshiki that come with their own built-in organza bow.

A furoshiki is a piece of cloth, traditionally square, that is wrapped around an object by tying the diagonally opposite corners together. It is an old Japanese way of transporting stuff or giving gifts.

In 2006 Uyehara watched a reality TV show in which inventors pitched their products and she thought, "I could win that," she said.

"I eventually made a sample," based on the idea of a furoshiki, dressed up as reusable gift wrap, that the recipient could then use to "gift it forward."

She applied for patents in 2008 and both were granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in July.

Each M’doridori wrap comes with a cardboard base that can be used if, say, there’s no box for a garment or other soft gift.

M’doridori products come in four sizes: the mini, for small items such as a compact disc, or jewelry boxes, for example. They cost $8.

"What people never think of is using them for gift cards," she said. "It makes the cutest gift," and is superior to a plain white envelope for a wedding or bridal or baby shower, she added. "We’ve had people use the mini wraps as (party) favors," she said.

The small size ($12) works for DVD boxes or boxes of macadamia nut candy, for example, while the large size would wrap a dress box, shoe box or even a sushi platter.

The large size costs $16, but the special chirimen fabric wraps cost $28.

The other popular size was designed for use around wine bottles, but "fits anything cylindrical," she said.

People have used the wine bottle wraps, wrapped around bottles, as centerpieces for parties or other special functions. The bottle wraps are $14, or $16 for chirimen fabric.

An extra-large size is available by special order, and all sizes can be special-ordered according to a color scheme or theme.

Uyehara is a veteran of special orders and bulk orders, and counts among her customers the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Club at Kukui’ula on Kauai, a marketing company in California that uses silver fabric Uyehara keeps regularly stocked, and other corporate clients.

She was approached by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for this year’s Emmy Awards, and for the celebrities’ swag bags she sent "a bunch of wraps for them to display, and 1,200 cards for wraps redeemable on her website."

All designs come in aloha print fabric or Asian prints, with a matching organza bow, as well as instructions on how to use the wrap, though it will be intuitive for anyone who has used a furoshiki.

The recent past has brought bright new beginnings and deeply sad endings to Uyehara, as she and her mother on June 28 opened Itadakimasu, a retail business that also wholesales Japanese-style dish-ware. "It’s like a mini Shirokiya," in the days when Shirokiya sold those types of items. It "was supposed to be my mom’s store," but she died after an illness only nine months after her father had died, she said.

As a sales representative for the lines of dishware and other items she sells in the store, she’s able to offer her accounts "firsthand knowledge of what sells," and counsel them to stock particular colors of certain items, and so on. Meanwhile, her distributors "love (Itadakimasu), because it’s like a free showroom for them," she said.

Uyehara and her mother introduced the retail-and-wholesale concept at a couple of trade shows and "with all these izakayas and ramen shops opening up, we were super fortunate," she said. The shop’s social media followers also are fortunate, as Itadakimasu extends a 15 percent discount to anyone who follows the shop on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Naturally, Itadakimasu stocks M’doridori reusable gift wraps, which also are sold at a variety of retailers on Oahu, Hawaii island, Kauai, California, Florida, the Netherlands and Japan.

"Buy Local" runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.