Napkins

I'm always looking for practical ways to go green. There are many things that I would love to do such as composting, but I can't due to living in an apartment. So I decided that a small thing that I can do is change from using paper napkins to cloth. I can easily toss them into the laundry that I already do and it saves some trees from being cut down to wipe my face. I have looked at several ideas and patterns online but found most of them to be to large. I don't have a very large table to set, so the large size ones just looked silly. And I think that they are more of a nicer thing, like for holiday dinners and such. But more so I really wanted to be able to store the napkins in a napkin holder on my table. This is what I came up with

I now have a set of 10 napkins that fit perfectly into my napkin holder. I really like them a lot. What made this project even better was that everything came from my existing stash of fabric! I think that what I would like to do is make a few sets of 10 or so that I can change out when I get tired of looking at the patterns or colors. Maybe I will make some bright colorful ones for summer.

One of the reasons why I wanted to do this project, other than the green factor, was to get some practice with sewing straight and doing hand seaming. Here is what I learned: don't sew while talking on the phone, don't decide to do all the hand finishing when you are half asleep, and ironing can do wonders!