For the past 3 months in the Wonder Worman household, we have been been using cloth napkins and rags instead of paper towels and paper napkins.  I wanted to think of another way to cut back on the amount of trash we were contributing to the landfill.  Composting the food waste with the Red Wigglers is going well.  I have occasionally thrown in some napkins from dinner but never those with cleaning residue so I decided to use the cloth solution.

We already had a stash of cloth napkins given to us as gifts for the holidays, house warming, and Cinco de Mayo (My favorite time of the year!!). We also had a variety of rags from old towels and t-shirts.   I thought I was set and didn’t need to purchase any more.  Well, that changed this week.  I started thinking about how I had increased the amount of laundry loads.  Now, I was worried about the water and energy being used to keep these clean!  I was determined to find a solution to increase our supply of napkins therefore decreasing the amount of times the napkins and rags needed to be washed.  So, I decided to make my own napkins.  We have a beautiful sewing machine that was given to Little a for Christmas.  She uses it often to create pillows and “fun stuff”.  Now, it was my turn to make some napkins.  For those of you that know me, I AM NOT a person that sews, but I was determined to give it a try for the sake of the planet! I did some on line searching and found a cool site!  Link is below.

I picked this fallish fabric!  
Set the template on the backside of the fabric and traced with a pencil.  I don’t own fabric chalk?! what is that any way??
Fabric cut in squares.  I would’ve called it done but knew the sides would fray.
Finished!  I used Little a’s orange thread!  Thought the contrast was cool.  Plus, it was already set up on the machine, and I have trouble rethreading the bobbin and then threading the needle and all of that sewing stuff that you have to do on the machine! 

Here’s the link (click here) to the site where I found the set of instructions. Really quick and easy!  Next set of napkins will be made from Max’s too small oxford shirts! Recycling our clothes will be fun and will give us something to talk about when friends and family come over.  Don’t worry, I won’t use our underwear!