Rainy day activity - Tea Napkins

Now that we're a little more settled in our new barn, we've been having more folks over for dinner and keggers cocktails. I tend to go all out for these get togethers - loads of appetizers and deserts, using my fancy serving ware, and then...paper towels? Not super classy and most of all, not super fun. I also don't feel like buying paper napkins, because they're #1 wasteful and #2 there not super versatile, they're just...napkins.

So that brings us to cloth napkins. They're stuck in the worlds of fancy restaurants and thanksgiving dinner at Grandmas. Wrap your head around how awesome they can be! They're cute, reusable, cheap, and you can go nuts making them in different style for every season.

Sure, you can go buy fabric napkins at a place like Crate & Barrel, and pay $8 a piece for them. Better yet, you can dust off your sewing machine, pick up a few yards of cute fabric at JoAnns, and kill a few hours making however many napkins you'd like. For the following project, the total cost per napkin came to less than a dollar per napkin.

Cutting mat and quilting ruler, useful for so many projects!

You'll Need:

• Fabric (1.5 yards made me 9 12" tea sized napkins. Try to get a fabric without a lot of stretch and a non-linear pattern, you'll find it much more forgiving) 
• SHARP scissors
• Regular weight thread
• Sewing Machine
• Iron with steam function
• Measuring devices - I find that the quilting ruler and rotary cutting mat are well worth the extra dough for projects like these.

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Lazy Corners

1. Pick out your material. I wanted something spring/summer flavored, and cheap. This fabric was $3.99 a yard. The irregular pattern means I don't have to worry about the print looking crooked like you do with a line pattern. Also, the less stretch it has, the easier it will be to iron straight seams.
2. Decide how large you want your napkins. Full size dinner napkins are around 14". Take into account seam allowances  (for my 12" napkins I cut 13" raw) and the width of your material.
3. Measure and cut. I forgot to pick up a soluble fabric pens, so I used a soft pencil on the backside of the fabric to mark my cuts. They will get rolled into the seam.

Ziggy to the Zag stitch

4. Using an iron with the steam on, roll over 1/4" of fabric and crease flat. The steam will help really set the crease. If your machine doesn't have a serger, you'll have to roll the edge over a second time and press again. This ensures that all raw edges are wrapped up and sewn inside and you won't have to worry about frayed edges. If you do have a serger...I'm jealous.

5. At some point, you'll have to decide what sort of corner you want. You can do the lazy, folded over corners like I did, or you can do a mitered corner (think hospital bed sheet). My fingers aren't nimble enough to hold the fabric in a mitered shape, let alone holding it to iron. If you did 1/2" seams, it would probably be a lot easier. The mitered edges do look a lot cleaner, there's no arguing that.

6. Sew away! I used a zig zag stitch because it's more forgiving if you're not doing an absolutely straight line, which I definitely don't have the patience for. I find the ZZ also did a better job at locking down the seam. None of this applies if you're a lucky bastard with a serger.

7.  That's it. Throw a party, then throw these bad boys in the wash. Enjoy over and over.

Finished product!