Simplysewn: 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!