Cloth Napkins
I had been looking for some cheap cloth napkins, but not finding any, I made my own. Aren’t they pretty! Now I can stop using paper napkins. To be honest, I haven’t bought paper napkins in awhile and have just been using paper towels torn in half. So now I can feel classy and save the Earth at the same time.
I am satisfied enough with this set that I would make more in the future when these wear out, so here are the details of what I did so I can remember for next time. It took me almost 4 hours to make a set of 16 since I had to figure out what I was doing, but doing it again would probably only take about 2.5 hours.
I bought 48 inches of 100% homespun cotton cloth, 44 inches wide, at $2.99/yard (over with the quilting fabrics) and cut it to 16 "squares" of 11 inches by 12 inches to maximize the usage of fabric. Next time I'll truly make them square (11 x 11) for a finished size of 10 x 10. But I'll still buy 48 inches of cloth for a bit of margin.
I did the hems assembly-line style in two stages - crease two opposite sides for all of the squares, then hem, and then crease the remaining sides, and hem. I used an iron with steam setting to crease 1/2 inch, using a 1/2 inch fabric ribbon as a guide so I could iron over that, too. I then folded the cut-edge under to meet the crease as I fed the hem though the sewing machine. The result was a 1/4 inch doubled-over hem for which no cut edges were exposed.
Settings on the machine: straight stitch (i.e. not zigzag), 8 stitches per inch. I put the needle position to the right and used the right edge of the foot as a guide for the edge of the fabric - this put the stitches about right in the middle of the 1/4 inch hem. The second set of hems was tough to get started since the corner was thick with many layers of material. I had to feed it through by hand (lifting the foot and moving the fabric incrementally) until I got to the thin part where the machine could feed it through on its own. At the end of the hem I just let the stitch run right off the fabric without binding off in any special way (e.g. backstitching.) Time will tell whether this will be a problem or not.
Then, when I was done I cut off all the loose ends of thread. All done!
I am satisfied enough with this set that I would make more in the future when these wear out, so here are the details of what I did so I can remember for next time. It took me almost 4 hours to make a set of 16 since I had to figure out what I was doing, but doing it again would probably only take about 2.5 hours.
I bought 48 inches of 100% homespun cotton cloth, 44 inches wide, at $2.99/yard (over with the quilting fabrics) and cut it to 16 "squares" of 11 inches by 12 inches to maximize the usage of fabric. Next time I'll truly make them square (11 x 11) for a finished size of 10 x 10. But I'll still buy 48 inches of cloth for a bit of margin.
I did the hems assembly-line style in two stages - crease two opposite sides for all of the squares, then hem, and then crease the remaining sides, and hem. I used an iron with steam setting to crease 1/2 inch, using a 1/2 inch fabric ribbon as a guide so I could iron over that, too. I then folded the cut-edge under to meet the crease as I fed the hem though the sewing machine. The result was a 1/4 inch doubled-over hem for which no cut edges were exposed.
Settings on the machine: straight stitch (i.e. not zigzag), 8 stitches per inch. I put the needle position to the right and used the right edge of the foot as a guide for the edge of the fabric - this put the stitches about right in the middle of the 1/4 inch hem. The second set of hems was tough to get started since the corner was thick with many layers of material. I had to feed it through by hand (lifting the foot and moving the fabric incrementally) until I got to the thin part where the machine could feed it through on its own. At the end of the hem I just let the stitch run right off the fabric without binding off in any special way (e.g. backstitching.) Time will tell whether this will be a problem or not.
Then, when I was done I cut off all the loose ends of thread. All done!