Cloth Napkin “Tutorial”

I’m pretty sure I’m the last person on earth that should post a tutorial for sewing anything.   But if you’re a non-sewer like me, who just happened to get a new toy this week, you need something on which to practice your mad sewing skillz! 

So, here we go!

I bought a yard of off-white cotton fabric that felt good to the touch.  I don’t know how absorbent it will be, but it felt like it would make a good napkin.  I’m very scientific about this.

When I got it home, my sister reminded me to wash it before I sew it.  I’m not sure you have to do this for napkins, but I did it anyway. 

Then I cut it. It took me almost an hour to cut one yard of fabric into 9, 12 inch square pieces.  Really.  It took me that long. 

I then spent another half hour pressing seams on one napkin.  I even made mitered  the corners.  I followed these directions, but let me tell you, unless you’re making fancy Christmas napkins, don’t bother with all this pressing nonsense.  Really, you’re just going to smoosh them on your face and get them all dirty.  Do they have to be fancy?  I think not.

When you come to your senses, and decide just to sew the edges to prevent falling apart, this project takes no time at all!  And, the best part, is you get to practice your straight lines.  36 times!  You’d think after 36 straight line attempts, I would be great at straight lines.  On the contrary.  I think I got worse as I went along!  And I can’t figure out why the fabric stands still at the beginning of almost every line I do, creating a blob of stitching that messes the whole thing up.

After the seams/edges were done, I popped them back in the washer and dryer to ‘rough up’ the edges.  The edges (I hope) will get all feathery soft and cool looking (in my opinion) after a few washes I’m sure.  They look very rustic. 

 

And let me tell you.  If I can do this, you can do this.  Unless you don’t have a sewing machine.  I’m sure it’s physically possible to handsew 9 napkins, but who really wants to?

We’re on our way to a cheaper lifestyle!  I’m not going to have to buy as many paper products now (we’re also using less paper towels and more kitchen towels).  Oh, and we’re probably doing good for the environment too -  Going green, yadda, yadda, yadda.  We’re all about saving money in this family!