At the end of last year’s Scouting season, our Scout group had a potluck. Families were asked to bring their own plates, bowls, cups, and cutlery to be more environmentally-friendly than having everyone use disposable items. I thought it was a cool thing to do. I was particularly impressed by one family that brought cloth napkins. I’m a big fan of using cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers; why hadn’t it occurred to me earlier to use cloth napkins instead of disposable napkins?
I solicited my mom’s help (she has a rotary cutter and a serger) and ended up with a couple dozen napkins made from bird’s-eye cotton. We’ve been using them since the summer and it’s going well. I made enough that we can go about a week without running out of napkins. I just wash them with the rest of our white laundry. Some of them have gotten slight stains, but what do you expect? It doesn’t bother me. They do wrinkle around the edges, but I don’t bother ironing them for everyday use. When they come out of the laundry, I just fold them in quarters and put them in a drawer.
As we prepare to host my family for Christmas, however, I decided to take it up a notch. After making all my napkins, my mom gave Peter a book with 100 ways to fold napkins, so I flipped through it for inspiration. I ironed nine napkins and folded each one differently, selecting some of the simpler folds from the book. For a fairly minimal amount of work, we will have a pretty fancy-looking table for our Christmas dinner.
Lovely folding. All I know how to do is make rabbits, myself.
They weren’t hard to do with the instructions, but I think the only one I could fold from memory now is the candle.
Even the candle is pretty impressive