How To: Make Your Own No-Sew Cloth Napkins

updated May 10, 2019

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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Awhile back we promised a post on how to make your own cloth napkins (even if you have zero sewing skills). Well, here it is! These beauties take a little cutting, ironing, minor sewing, and voila! No more paper napkins for us…

You don’t need many materials for this project and the directions are simple; however, if anything seems confusing, please let us know in the comments and we’ll update the post!

Materials:

Scissors or a rotary fabric cutter (preferable for straight edges)
Fabric. Remember, you can always repurpose an old table cloth or other bits of household fabric.
Iron and ironing board
Heavy duty right angle ruler
Needle and thread (or Heat and Bond Hem Tape)
Chalk (but a pencil will do)

Step 1: If your fabric is new, launder it. You don’t want these napkins shrinking later.

Step 2: Iron your fabric well — get all those creases out! They’ll mess with the measuring and cutting you’re going to do next.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Step 3: Now that your fabric is laundered and ironed, you need to decide what size napkins you want. We went with16in squares. Once you decide on your size, add a half inch for the hem (i.e., we cut 16.5×16.5 squares). Now, using your ruler you can either a) if you’re using a fabric cutter, start in one corner and cut right along your ruler (like we did) or b) if you’re using scissors, measure and mark your fabric (with a pencil or preferably chalk), then cut out your squares.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Step 4: Your hem. Here’s how you’re going to make these napkins look nice. First, on the underside of the fabric, measure a 1/4 inch in from the edge and mark a line there. (It will run parallel to the edge of the fabric). Now you’re going to fold your fabric on that line and iron it. You want a nice straight edge.

Step 5: Now you have a 1/4 inch of fabric folded in. Fold that 1/4 inch in one more time and iron again. Now you have a nice finished edge.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Step 6: This is the fun/easy part. If you feel OK about a little needle and thread action — you’ll now run a slip stitch all along the hem of your napkin. It looks like the photo below. Knotting off the thread at every corner. If you don’t want to deal with a needle and thread, take your Heat n Bond tape and place it just under your finished hem (just as pictured above) and iron it down. Easy!

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Now. Eat something messy. Maybe something with a lot of BBQ sauce?

Image via Design*Sponge

Originally published 2008-09-10 – CB

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