Monday, September 27, 2010

EASY CLOTH NAPKINS WITH A SERGER






One of the first projects I knew I wanted to undertake for the wedding was cloth napkins for the tables. I settled on using the several colours from our invites and found gingham fabrics in different sizes of checks that matched as the main focus for the settings. I thought it would be easy enough to find a lot of different colours in a decent weight of cotton fabric, but it was not the case. Yellow was almost impossible- I ended up buying 3 yards from someone in Wisconsin on Ebay. But I was very happy with what I ended up finding, colour-wise, in the end.

I tried making 6 napkins at first, to get a real sense of how long it would take. After washing (pre-shrinking) the fabric, then ironing it, cutting it, and hemming 6 napkins, I was a little worried. The hemming especially took a very long time- about 20 minutes a piece using an iron and double fold. Oy. Could I really make 140 in this way?

Then my gorgeous and talented friend at (skona life) who is a proud owner of a serger (remember those crazy-looking contraptions from home ec that cut and sewed fabric at the same time to create easy and solid seams?) suggested I use it if I wanted to make quick(ish) work of them . That is exactly what I did and was very happy with the process (so fast!) and results (professional-looking seam without any bulk). The mix of bright colours really popped and looked casual and pretty.

1 comment:

hyd said...

hi lora! we loved your wedding... the pickles and napkins and postcards all so lovely. i'll be following your blog from now on! xo