Each month of
Stitch Club has been so enjoyable and it's felt really good to be consistently hand-stitching again. This month's focus was outline and filled stitches, and I stuck to the program as they say, and did a project suggested in our Stitch Club Journal - embroidered cloth napkins.
For the napkins themselves, I used a lovely
Kaleidoscope Bundle offered in
Alison Glass' shop with six beautifully cool colors.
Purl Soho has a simple
fringed napkin tutorial that I followed to the letter (except the size), then added a simple doodle from
Doodle Stitching: The Motif Collection by
Aimee Ray. The stitching of the design was easily done with the use of
Wash Away Stitch Stabilizer - I printed the design times six right on a sheet of the stabilizer, then cut them apart and placed one on each napkin.
As luck would have it, I had a partial spool of variegated
Sulky 30wt #4021 [
Truly Teal] "Blendables" that I used to hem the edge of the fabric squares which I had cut at 16". And then for the doodle-stitching, I used a spool of
Wonderfil! variegated
perle cotton in mermaid, and I think the consistency of having the embroidery the same on all the napkins really brought the set together.
The one finicky part of the whole project was that even though I tried to cut my fabric squares on-grain, invariably not all four sides were on grain.... some not at all. So that meant for some careful pulling and trimming of threads to make the fringe. I found my
Tula Pink Large Ring Micro Tip Scissor invaluable in that trimming, so that certainly helped.
Anyway, that was of minor consequence, as I think the bi-color fringe adds the perfect finishing touch to these napkins, so it was well worth the effort.
Between the beautiful colors of the shot cotton
Kaleidoscope fabric, the simple variegated embroidered doodles, and the fact that we use cloth napkins in our home every day, let's just say this was a very satisfying project, and I know we'll put them to good use. Definitely pretty, but made to be used.
