Mitred Napkin Tutorial
After making some cute crochet napkin rings last month, I thought it might be nice to show you how to make the pretty little napkins that went with them. Although a basic square should be a simple matter, I want to show you a great trick for getting really professional and neat looking mitred corners.
Not only will this technique give your napkins a touch of class, once you know how to get these corners looking good, you’ll soon find plenty of other projects that can make use of the same technique.
What You'll Need
Some pretty fabrics approximately 16 x 16”
You can use one fabric to make them all or choose a different fabric for each napkin you want to make
Contrasting thread
What To Do
Once you’ve cut your fabric to the right size, with the wrong side of the fabric facing up, fold over the raw edge so that you have ¼” hem.
Then fold over again so that the raw edge is hidden underneath and pin in place. Don’t worry too much if your hem isn’t exactly ¼”, it’s more important to get them even. It’ll pay off later!
Repeat the same thing around all the side of the square and then press the hems into place.
Once the fabric has cooled. Take out the pins and unfold the fabric. You should have some nice lines impressed on your fabric. Now we’re going to cut off the corner, using those lines as a guide.
Cut a diagonal line across the corner, intersecting the corners squares as shown by the line of the picture above. You can see in this picture how it should look.
Next we’re going to fold the corner in, again on the diagonal, using the line as shown on this picture here.
Here’s how it’ll look once the fold has been made. Repeat steps 5 to 7 each corner.
Now all we need to do is re-fold the hems back into position, while keeping this corner fold in place. The edge of each corner will now have a nice clean angle.
Once the hems both sides of the corner are re-folded, pin the corners to keep that beautiful neat mitre in place ready for sewing.
If you want to, you can use a contrasting coloured thread. I wanted the contrasted thread to show at the front to make a feature, so I loaded my bobbin with the bold coloured cotton.
Carefully sew along your seams, as closely as you comfortably can to the inside edge. Aim for a 1/16 to ⅛ seam if you can, taking care at the corners to sew right up to the centre point of the mitre, and then turning the fabric to sew along the next seam edge.
Once you've got the hang of this technique you'll find it handy in for all sorts of things.
