Cloth Napkins

My June sewing class was yesterday. The project this month was cloth napkins which seems like a simple thing, but I was very excited to learn how to make them! We use cloth napkins every so often but ours are really plain--just a normal edge that's been turned under twice and straight-stitched. I always look at the embroidered linen ones in the store and think they're pretty, although I can't bring myself to pay $10 per napkin. So I was happy to learn how to make my own. And all it took was some nice thick fabric and a wing needle for my sewing machine.

My first choice of fabric was linen but at this store it was a little out of my price range. Instead I opted for the alternate fabric they recommended, which was a thick essex cotton. After we cut out the squares, our instructor showed us how to press the edges to make a perfect mitered corner (also something I didn't know how to do!). Once the napkins were pressed, I sewed a simple stitch on the back along the raw edge to hold it down. Then I swapped needles and put the wing needle in and sewed around the top side of the napkin, over the first seam, using one of the decorative stitches on my machine. Done!

The instructor showed us all what some of the most common stitches are, but we had to play with them a little on scrap fabric to see which ones we liked. We found out that stitches can look completely different depending on the fabric used.

I liked the way her sample linen napkin looked, so I tried the same stitch on my cotton one and it looked NOTHING like hers. So I tried a few different ones until I found a pattern I liked, then I sewed it around my napkins. I made a set of four. They're navy with navy thread, so it's a little hard to see detail in the pictures, but here is how they looked when finished:

I didn't know they were so easy to make! It takes a little while to sew the decorative stitching around them, but they're so pretty when finished. I'm thinking this might be a fun idea for Christmas gifts!