leaf napkins

Today I made some leaf napkins to go with my ivy plates and the new placemats I bought at Ikea. (Have I mentioned how much I love Ikea?)

First I cut the leaf fabric I bought at my favorite discount fabric store. Eight 20-inch squares. Quick: if I can get 2 squares in each row and each row is 20 inches high, how many inches of fabric do I need? Yeah, I bought way too much fabric. Oh, well.

I pressed all the edges and corners...

And pinned every edge--that meant about a dozen pins in each napkin.

Clearly this was going to take a while--time to go put on some more comfortable shoes. And maybe clean them once in a while!

After a good little while I had all eight pressed and pinned.

Now to my trusty sewing machine to sew all the way around.

One down. SEVEN to go.

I thought I'd better break for a bagel sandwich and a diet coke before I got too weak to carry on (for Lord's sake--I love Eloise).

Cut to later: all eight napkins finished. Look, the iron's still plugged in and will be until you get back from picking the teen-aged daughter up from school and running her errands for an hour. Not part of the plan.

Here's one all done. Ready to be assaulted with spaghetti sauce and chocolate cake. I should be so lucky.