Works For Me Wednesday: Homemade table napkins

While I still had the sewing bug from making those cute curtains for my laundry room, I also tackled a project I had been longing to do for a really long time--

Making table napkins!

And, yes, from a bed sheet, of course. ;) That seems to be a good way to get material, as evidenced by my kitchen curtains and my laundry room curtains. (Click on those links to see what I did.)

My aunt graciously allowed me to cut to pieces use one set of queen-sized bed sheets she had recently given us. They were a kind of burnished orange color, which I figured would be perfect to camouflage the inevitable tomato sauce stains. I measured the flat sheet and found that I could get the best results with cutting the pre-sewn napkins to 19.5 inches square, and made 25 napkins with just the flat sheet (finished size: 17 inches square). This left a narrower strip of cloth along one side, which I cut into 19.5 inch lengths to make "snack-sized" napkins (finished size: 17 inches by 9.5 inches). I also made some even smaller "snack-sized" napkins from leftover material from one of the white bed sheets I used to make my kitchen curtains (finished size: 10.5 inches square).


Since I already had in mind that I wanted to make my own table napkins, I had previously searched online for directions on the best way to make them and found tutorials on how to sew mitered corners. (Click here to see one way to sew mitered corners on napkins.) However, I consider myself fairly new to sewing on a machine and prefer to keep my sanity, so I kept it simple. This is what my simple corners look like:


I highly recommend ironing the seams before pinning them--this simple act made pinning and sewing the napkins a breeze! Also, if you are using a bed sheet, determine whether or not it is worth your effort to rip out existing seams. I used the side and bottom seams, but if I had this to do over again, I would not have ripped out the seam at the top of the sheet. This project took about one day to complete. I now have a good supply of table napkins to replace the...well...t-shirt scraps we had been using for napkins. I still have the fitted sheet and/or the pillow cases if I want to make more, but 25 table napkins (plus the few snack-sized ones) seem to be a good amount for us.

Total cost: Virtually free, since I had matching (albeit really old) thread on-hand that was from my mom's thread collection...and that works for me!


By the way, as an update to my previous Works for Me Wednesday post, Saving Money on Your Electric Bill, my most recent electric bill was $15 less than the previous month! YAY!!! :)