Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Flour Sack and Fabric Napkins

We had a Confirmation party for Nolan last Sunday. Confirmation was on a Monday night. Not such a great day for having a get together. Of course, no one asked me how I felt about this so we went, he was confirmed and it was beautiful. Sunday was not such a beautiful day. It was cold and rainy but we were happy to have some of our family here to celebrate Nolan's saint (St. Pascual Baylon) and his Confirmation. 

We have a very small house (just over 1,000 sq. feet) and not much space to store things. I do love to entertain and would love to have a monthly get together with friends to talk about life, politics, music, art, education, faith, etc. with a stew and bread type get-together. What I don't want is plastic ware. However, we just don't have the amount of dishes necessary to host a party. So I decided to make a thrift store run to find some dishes and napkins. I was lucky enough to find some gorgeous china and some vintage fabric. Here's a little tutorial using this fabric and some flour sack towels to make some reusable napkins.
 1.Iron your fabric to smooth out the wrinkles. I used flour sack fabric and also some end of bolt pieces I bought for WAY cheap at the fabric store. To be honest, the flour sack was much more expensive than the end of bolt fabric!
 I found that the flour sack towels I bought about a year ago at KMart was much softer than those I bought this week. They are both 100% cotton. Who knows the difference?

 3. Depending on your fabric piece, I just lay out the flour sack fabric or cut the fabric to about 18x18 or so and the flour sack to a little larger. If you have a small piece of vintage fabric that you love, just use it and lay out the flour sack so that it is a little larger than the fabric piece. Pin it like crazy. The flour sack fabric can be a little stretchy so the pins are kind of important.
 4. Here you can see the pins a little closer.
5. I use my walking foot to keep the fabrics feeding evenly. It isn't necessary to have a walking foot but it really does help to make the fabrics feed evenly and keep from bunching up. Sew around the edges (fabrics right sides together) with about a 1/4 inch seam. Sew the whole way around but leave at least a four inch space to turn the napkin right side out.
 6. Cut close to the seams.
 7. Cut diagonally across the corners.
 8. Turn the napkin right side out. 
 9. I use a chop stick or this little pointed dowel rod with a pointed edge to turn the corners. 
 10. Iron the edges of the napkins. Sometimes I use my chop stick to push out the edges of the napkin prior to ironing.
 11. Top stitch using 1/4 inch stitching. I recently learned that top stitching means you stitch twice around the edges. If you only stitch once it's actually called edge stitching. I just love reading those sewing books to learn such things!
 12.Your napkin is finished! Now just make some fabulous food and invite your friends or family over to share the meal!
 Here is my new dish cabinet (taken from our shed) with our dishes and mish mash napkins!
 This whole cabinet: dishes and linens, cost $20!
 I'm just so happy about this addition. I hope you enjoy making something simple that can enhance your entertaining with a minimum of work!

1 comment:

Amanda said...

Beautiful work! This has inspired me to make my own cloth napkins this weekend. I typically just buy them from the thrift store, but I think these are much nicer.

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