Archive for cloth napkins

Those napkins

I got the urge to deal with them today.  Rather suddenly, in fact, while in the midst of packing and shipping orders.  I had just taped the last envelope closed, and was weighing the packages in preparation for postage printing, when I had this overwhelming desire to dye those stained napkins. I couldn’t shake it, [...]

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Vintagey stripe envy

As you may know, we’ve been using cloth napkins around here since 2007.  I’ve gone a little loopy over them from time to time (the evidence can be found here, if you need some convincing).  I have an everyday set, and three seasonal sets of 20-25 coordinating prints each, and I change them out in [...]

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Changing of the guard

It takes me just about as long to take down Christmas as it does to put it up.  In other words, about a month.  I’m really so slow about the whole thing.  I do a room, and then I live with it a while.  Until I’m ready to do another room.  And then I enjoy [...]

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Ode to Elsie’s Kitchen

I think I’ve formed an unnatural attachment to our Summer napkins.  I don’t know if it’s the unseasonably hot weather of the past week, the eager anticipation of the summer after a particularly cold and wet winter, or just me being crazy, but I’ve been daydreaming again.  I switch out our cloth kitchen napkins every [...]

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Lunch Box Napkins

A few of you asked for more information about how I make my napkins, so I decided now was as good a time as any to whip up a few for the boys’ lunch boxes and photograph the process. This tutorial makes three small napkins, which when folded in half, are approximately the size of [...]

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Seasonal Napkin Disorder

Can one ever have too many seasonal cloth napkins?  Is there really such a thing as an overabundance of soft, gentle, go-ahead-and-use-them-everyday kitchen linens?  It’s been over two years since I made my first set of napkins out of quilting cottons, and in that time I have not bought a single package of paper napkins. [...]

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Napkin Land

Now that all the gifts have been given, let me you about some of the things I made!  This gift was for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  It’s a set of 12 napkins in shades of gray & yellow.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember the colors in their kitchen, and I’m pretty sure [...]

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Finally. The Christmas Napkins.

Please tell me these will be our “forever napkins.”  I don’t think I can spend another Late November / Early December cranking out napkin after napkin after napkin.  *yawn* I do so love the results.  But the actual making?  of 28 napkins?  Well, it’s a little boring. And that’s why it took me 2 weeks [...]

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Not so Secret Christmas Crafting

You may remember my totally-inappropriate-for-summer mini-flip-out over having found the perfect Christmas fabric for my seasonal napkins five months ago… Well, today I got started sewing myself a set.  I’d only done one when I took this photo a few hours ago, but I’m up to seven now. “Sure, Lisa, those look like they will [...]

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Good Morning, Fall!

Here in New Jersey, it’s not easy to tell that fall has arrived simply by looking around. Much of the scenery is still bathed in the verdant greenery of summer. When we walk to the bus stop in the morning, there are not yet piles of dead leaves for us to trample with a satisfying [...]

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