Christmas Napkins

 A few months ago I spotted a lovely little Christmas tree shaped napkin hanging in my favourite fabric shop. I purchased some fabric I'd had my eye on for a while now, but until now had had no excuse to buy it, and the owner was kind enough to give me a template. I was away!

2 FQ's (fat quarters) of contrasting fabircs makes 2 napkins as 2 pieces can be cut from each FQ.

It's simly a case of stitching right sides together, leaving a gap to turn in the right way.

 At this point I have 3 top tips:
1.)  I now keep a golf tee in my sewing box. This may sound bizarre but stick with me. My other half is a keen golfer and so I am not surprised to find golf tees in my car, hand bag etc. It just so happend there was one at my desk when I was turning my first napkin in the right way, and so I looked around for something to prod the corners with. I have in the past made the mistake of using sissors or a pen/pencil and rippign stright through the fabric. The golf tee is perfect, its not so pointed that it will break through the fabric/seam, but pointed enough to get the corners nice and smart.
2.) Top tip number 2 is once turned in the right way, roll the edges between your fingers to make sure all of the piece is in the right way and the seam isn't tucked in further than necessay.
3.) Now IRON! I was always one for missing out this step with any sewing, probably why it was never terrible accurate or precise. This is most definitely worth it, it not only makes your work look better but helps it to hold its shape when you go to topstich.


I was really pleased with how the first 2 sets of 2 came out that I went back for more fabric to make them into sets of 4.

4 set made up in different colours - minus buttons

Diamond Challenge & a few more napkins - When I set up my page I initally was just going to offer the one option of a postcard - I had calculated that I would need to make 12 postcards to get in 12 donations of £5 to make my £60. After posting a photo of my napkins on Facebook and receiving good comments I decided to offer a set of 4 as an option for a £10 donation. (The costs of all threads/fabric/postage covered by me). This idea took off and soon I had 4 orders awaiting my attention. 

The buttons really added the finishing touches.

Blue set, my favourite and soon snapped up.

The personal touch - personalised buttons

My recent discovery of Stip&Haak patterns opened me up to a whole other world. They even have a fans of Stip&Haak page on Facebook. I noticed on the patterns and on the fan page that many people use personalised buttons to add detail to their work.

So a quick Google and I was immersed in pages of buttons. I wanted wooden buttons and managed to find GirlsFever website: https://girlsfever.com/ based abroad (Hong Kong I think). I usually try to buy in the UK where possible but struggled to find anything I liked and priced reasonably over here. (Usually I really don't mind spending a bit extra to buy British but when you find something you like you have to go with it.

I deliberated about sizes, fonts, icons and wording for some time. The people at GirlsFever were great though, once I place my order online they made a mock up design and e-mailed it to me for approval, and were fantastically accommodating when I changed the design twice as it didn't quite fit how I wanted it. 

The buttons arrived less than 2 weeks later and I was really pleased with the quality.

I was over the moon with these and couldn’t wait to start using them. Unfortunately, my most recently finished make was the baby blanket featured in a previous post (these buttons arrived a few weeks ago, before I returned to the blogging realm) and I wouldn't feel confident attaching anything to a baby blanket that could come off or cause a choking hazard. Not wanting to miss the opportunity I reached for the brown labels, stitching one of my lovely new buttons to one corner of the label with matching yarn and wrote my little message. I then cut the washing instructions for the wool out of the ball band and stuck it onto reverse side of the label - genius if I do say so myself!! :) 

I am so pleased with the quality and the ability to add that extra personal touch to my makes. Will definitely order from them again when I run out and am recommending them to all. They also happen to do fabric labels which you can sew into larger items for that professional look.