home ec:project 1b - double sided napkins and project 2 - drawstring gift bag

well, i've finished the double sided napkins with lace edging and the drawstring gift bag. i feel so accomplished! :) the double sided napkins were a pain in the behind! it was so hard to make sure that the edging was being stitched on straight. the first one i tried turn out pretty bad.

yikes!

it didn't help that i wasn't paying attention to the directions and i left the opening on the corner instead of along the straight edge. i thought the blue stitching would look pretty. turns out, i really didn't like it at all. it took me a little bit to get them right, but overall, i'm really happy with the way they turned out!

i kept the blue stitching on the bottom, but switched the top thread to white. i like it much, much better.  there are definitely still places on all of them where the lace that's showing is a little wonky, but i kind of got the hang of keeping it straight by the end.

pretty good, right?

now, i made these for my mom who loves tea parties. i don't really like the look of edging on napkins and knew that i wouldn't use them. i thought that they would be perfect as fancy napkins for a tea party. i made a set of 5. (the blue fabric was from a remnant bin at joann's and only had enough material for 5 napkins and that includes the one where i ripped out all of those little teeny tiny blue stitches that i messed up and redid it.) the second project in the class was a drawstring gift bag, which was perfect, since i was giving these to my mom, and i had the perfect amount of left over blue fabric to make a matching gift bag/pouch for the napkins to go in!

 

seriously, this project was soooo much easier than the double sided napkins!! 

i thought about going with a white ribbon, but i decided the green added a little something :)

getting the ribbon through was kind of a pain. the directions said to pin a safety pin to the end of the ribbon to guide it through. well, that's a great idea except i could not find a single safety pin in my entire house!! i used a straight pin and eventually got the ribbon all the way through, but it took a while because i kept sticking the pin through the material. 

with the napkins inside

all in all, i probably won't make another set of double sided napkins ever again unless someone specifically requests them for christmas or something, but the bag was easy and didn't take very long at all!

now to project 3 - the tote/grocery bag!