Up to My Eyeballs in Napkins

This weekend, I spent hours sewing and I only have one napkin to show for it!

But what a lovely napkin it is, no?

I cut out 24 of these badboys after seeing Caroline's napkins at Trillium Design, based on Penny's tutorial for linen napkins at Sew Take a Hike.

These are the 14 with the sides sewn on, but not mitered or turned...

You see, I'm a bit of a napkin hoarder. Any time we go to a place with napkin dispensers (oh yeah, we're fancy hipsters like that), I always grab a handful of napkins. I don't know why I do this, it's not like I'm unusually sloppy...  But this results in having clean napkins shoved in the bottom of my purse or tucked into corners of the car... Perfectly good, unused napkins that eventually get rumpled and dirty and then, thrown away.

At home, we use those pick-a-size paper towels (told ya we were fancy!). But, there again, I like to have a couple, so there are folded paper towels in odd places around our apartment. Because why would I throw them away if they aren't even really dirty?!

I'm trying to be better for the environment (and for the restaurants!) and more economical. I made a set of napkins for my friend that were a different style. I just used a printed square and a Kona sold square, sewed around the edges with a hole left for turning and then top-stitched around the edge. Very easy, very cute. But, then you're using two full squares of cotton and I didn't want to use that much of my precious fabric. (On the other hand, I ended up using a 12.5" square and almost an entire FQ for each napkin, so you tell me if I came out ahead!) And Penny and Caroline's were so lovely with the bright colors and mitered corners, I thought I'd give it a go...

The blue fabric is 100% cotton shirting that I got at Hancock's anniversary sale for 95 cents a yard (!!) and I thought they'd make good napkins. I paired them up with some FQs that have been languishing in a drawer. I didn't worry about matching the blue or anything (we'll be wiping our faces with them, after all!). And voila - one napkin, 23 partial napkins...

This was a bigger undertaking than I had thought. Note to self - always do a test block/napkin first :)

And now I think we're in for the Summer Sewing Slump. I still think about sewing a lot - probably because of the five million blogs I follow... but I haven't seem to do much sewing lately. Fortunately, it's just a hobby and not a job :)