Tuesday 15 November 2011

Christmas Tree Napkins

I like Christmas craft.
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Christmas is at my mother's house this year, and I thought I would make some fancy, silly napkins to take (in addition to the summer pudding, savoury cheesecake for vegetarian husband and nice salad that are our requested contribution - my mother is very organised). I am making them now, so that I can give them to her next weekend and pre-empt any other napkins about which she might be thinking.
The idea has been perculating since I saw these napkins on Kathryn's blog last year.
I made 12x 10 inch radius napkins, translating this to 25cm to draw a semicircle on the side of a carboard box as a template.
I folded 114cm quilting cotton in half lengthways, and found that this was a perfect width for the napkin + seam allowance of about 1cm. I cut 6 from each of 2 doubled fabrics, but forgot to measure how much fabric it took. Kathryn says it would be 3 and 3/8 yards of each fabric, and that looks right to me. I have more fabric, in case there end up being more guests, which often happens due to my hospitable parent. (12 is only one extra at the moment)

You sew two constrasting fabrics right sides together, leaving a space for turning, trim, press, turn, press, stitch up opening. Easy-peasy.

Kathryn gives links to some blogs with measuring, sewing and folding instructions, but they are both for smaller napkins. In my opinion you would not want to go much smaller than a 25cm radius, Christmas napkins need to be generous to cope with too much eating and drinking whilst in one's nice clothes.
The folding is fairly intuitive, but I took photos anyway.

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Ta da!
they were very quick.
I wonder if my son's teacher would like some for her Christmas pressie?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your fabrics are perfectly lovely. Nice!

Carol said...

Thank you, your timing is perfect! I was in Spotlight today looking at christmas fabrics and trying to find inspiration. Now I know exactly what to make. I will be making three sets of these this very weekend.

Little Hunting Creek said...

Those are really pretty - what a great idea!

liza jane said...

I love this! Like napkin origami.

velosews said...

Beautiful.

Sew5280 said...

Great idea - very easy project with a lot of impact! Can't wait to use up some of my Christmas fabric - wonderful gift idea too!

KathyS said...

So pretty and so simple. Thanks for showing us.

Sharon said...

Great napkins and thank you for the reminder.

Crystal said...

I've been considering those since seeing them last year, as well. Yours turned out great.