Quilt Guild Demo - Cloth Napkin Tute

First off, just let me say; I love cloth napkins made from cotton, linen and even silk. Having 4 children in the house made cloth napkins very useful. They sopped up spills, doubled as bibs and aprons, kept rolls warm, and generally looked prettier than paper and certainly are not as wasteful in resources.

I have napkins made by this method for nearly all holidays and also to match the quilted table runners I have made. Another benefit of cloth napkins is that they tend to stay were you place them and not slide off your lap onto the floor.

My biggest frustration with making my own cloth napkins was getting the hems done to my satisfaction. Sergers and me do not agree on what constitutes a nicely turned corner. I also don't have the proper foot for my sewing machine to make a rolled hem and again in the past I have had issues with turning those corners. What to do? What to do? I wanted to make my own napkins, but how to resolve the hem issue?

Enter a subscription to Martha Stewart's Living Magazine as a gift from the Dear Daughter, Erin. Without fail, if I wanted to do something like, oh say, make pierced tin can lanterns or make my own soft pretzels, the next issue of the magazine would have the instructions, sigh. It is a running joke in our household as it happened so often.

The basic instructions for making these napkins came from an issue of Living magazine, probably 10 years ago or more as my Christmas napkins are at least that old. Of course, Martha's team made them in linen and hand hem stitched them. Not for me, that hand-stitching business, if I can help it.

Basic instructions are as follows:

Step 1. Choose fabric(s) Squares can be as little as 10 x 10 up to 22 x 22 inches (I like big napkins, I did make a 4 x 4 finished just to see if I could, BTW)

Step 2. Press 1/4 inch fold on all four sides




Step 3. Press another 1 inch fold on all four sides (Get a good hard crease here, shot of steam helps)

Step 4. Open the 1 inch fold and fold corners into a point with the 1/4 inch folds aligned

Step 5. Measure for the 45 degree angle from the junction of the the crease marks

Step 6. Draw sewing line, repeat for the other 3 corners.



Step 7. Stitch on sewing line

Step 8. Flip corner to right side to check your angle (Ask me how important this step is)


Step 9. Flip back and trim point seam allowances on all 4 corners to 1/8 inch.

Step 10. Flip all corners and press, stitch hem. (this can be a straight stitch, hem stitch, decorative stitch or even done by hand)



Voila, you have made a napkin!

FYI: I just lay the cotton ones flat to dry and rarely have to press them. Be sure to make them from a good quality cotton.

Lost Wallet and Rude Acquaintances

I went to the Sew Expo in Denver with some acquaintances on Saturday. I had a wonderful time, as I got to see my Denver and Boulder friends while looking at all the goodies for purchase. I did restrain myself from buying everything I saw. I got some lovely new colours of wool roving though, to add to my needle felting collection.

I really coveted the attachment from Crawford with 5 felting needles for a sewing machine that the bobbin guts are removed from. I so want one, sigh... I can better justify spending $60.00 to $70.00 on an attachment and $20.00 or so for a used sewing machine than the $400.00 for the needle felting machines by the big brands. My Scottish penny pinching soul cannot justify all that money for a machine that only does one thing, but $100.00 and recycled/re-purposed as well, none so bad...

The rude acquaintances were the ladies I rode up to Denver with. One was over an hour late and didn't apologize for it. The other whinged about the headache she had all day. I was harangued for being too QUIET! Me, quiet? Well, the person who said it, never shut up, so how could I get a word in edgewise?

Rudeness in general, reigned. I don't know about you, but I was taught to say please, thank you and I am sorry when appropriate by MY parents. I would have been better off going alone or not at all on that day as I also lost my wallet, sigh.

The lost wallet may be in the back seat of the driver's car. However, I woke her up when I called to ask and left a VM. In return, I got back a cranky VM, but still don't know if my wallet is in her car, and I called her over 24 hours ago.

I now have to gather all of the paperwork that I can find and go to the Social Security office, the DMV and the bank. Ick, poo, waaah. Of course, after I do all this, she'll likely call and tell me she found it.

Thanks to my Clever Erin, the DD who gave me a new wallet for Christmas, I will have something to put everything in when I get the new stuff. I hadn't transferred my stuff from my old wallet to the new one as yet.

I did have some knitting with me, thank heavens. When we stopped at the Container Store for one of the ladies to purchase something for her closet, I had something to do. My friend, Katte had made a gift bag for me that was just the right size to hold a skein of yarn and the hat project. I hooked the drawstring to my jacket sleeve button and away I went, walking, looking and knitting. One person in the store (a customer) look at me like I had dog doody on my shoe for walking around knitting (I think she was jealous, LOL). I didn't have my Altoid's tin full of stitch markers with me, so I had to buy some paperclips to use, as I had gotten to the decreases and didn't want to stop knitting. Paper clips can be SO useful. Everyone else wanted to know what my project was going to be and wasn't I smart to have knitting along. I never leave home without it anymore...

Edited at 4:15 pm.

The finale of the story is this. I spent all morning and afternoon replacing everything. It's a challenge when you don't have ID to prove who you are. Fortunately, my picture was still in the database at the DMV and I could be photo ID'd from it. I answered all the questions correctly at the bank as well. SS was easier as I had my latest award letter to prove it was me. So, the day was spent taking care of all of this. I spent nearly 2 hours at the DMV. The bank, thank god, was pretty painless.

The daughter arrived home and I told her the saga and she kinda got mad about my having to do all of this and spend $21.00 to replace my license as well. So, she called the person whose car it might have been in, and low and behold, that person, indeed had found it. She claimed to have left me a VM but I can prove that she did not. If she had, I wouldn't have had to waste my whole day. She was also VERY rude to my daughter and hung up on her. The gist of the coversation was basically to tell me to eat shit and die as I was rude to her and her friend. I thought I was being EXTREMELY patient and kind, even so, introducing them to my REAL friends from Metro Denver. She also LIED to my daughter. I don't do that very well, now I am furious. I'll have to see this person every week if I want to continue to knit at my LYS on Wednedsday Mornings. Gaaah...

If there is a silver lining, I will not have to renew either my license or my bank card until 2014. Both were due up next year. So, that is DONE!