“I Wipe My Hands On My Pants” Dinner Napkins

After messy meals I wipe my hands on my pants and t-shirts. That is, I have transformed my old clothing and forgotten fabric into dinner napkins! The black and red fabric was my pants, the grey napkins are from an old college club T-shirt, and the blue plaid is from fabric that has been sitting in a box in the garage for the past decade.

The inspiration came for this project from a desire to rid myself of paper products around the kitchen. I stay away from paper napkins at the dinner table if I don’t need a napkin, but I do catch myself grabbing one-too-many paper towels when I’m cooking or cleaning in the kitchen. I suppose the guilt has just been building, to the point where I decided to upcycle some old clothing and make small fabric dinner napkins for everyday use around the kitchen. I would really like to find some kind of nifty holder for them, and use them frequently instead of all the kitchen paper products. When my boyfriend and I move into our new place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in about a month, we’ll put an extra bin next to the trash can to throw dirty fabric napkins in after each use. Then I’ll just toss them in with the rest of the laundry at the end of each week!

If we can make it a habit to use these all the time we’ll save money from purchasing less paper products, but we can also feel a little less terrible about harming the environment after each disposable paper sheet. I’ll make some large, fancy napkins to coordinate with my tablecloths and everything once it’s time for that, but I didn’t think too much about color coordinating for everyday purposes. Besides, I kind of like the eclectic look.

Now, here’s how I made them.

1. I used a ruler to make my 7-inch square pattern. After you finnish the edges, the napkins end up being a bit over 5 inches, so increase your square size if you want larger napkins.

2. Pin your pattern to your fabric, and cut it out.

3. I used this tutorial from Skip to my Lou in order to learn how to make mitered edges, as I did not know beforehand. Its pretty easy but a little time consuming. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep this project out and work on it over the course of a couple days.

4. I pinned down the mitered edges.

5. I then went ahead and used the sewing machine to sew it all down, using the red thread that was already in the machine at the time.



6. After using the iron one more time around the sides of the square, you have your final product. You’ll be wiping your hands on your pants in no time.

I am really excited about how my dinner napkins turned out, and happy to finally have a good sized collection of re-usable dinner napkins to have around the kitchen!