Vingt serviettes rayées

Once upon a time, I read a list of money saving tips that mostly made me roll my eyes--except for the suggestion of using...nay...making cloth napkins.  So I cut a bunch of 9 inch-ish squares from some weird calicoes I'd bought and regretted, serged the edges, and happily used those for a few years before thrifting nearly a dozen much prettier "real" cloth napkins (that had obviously never been used--I'll thrift a lotta things, but...not used napkins...)  After five and a half years, those napkins aren't so pretty any more. (Holes.  They have holes, lots of holes, and frayed edges.  I'm not being needlessly picky about light wear.)  So I decided to make new napkins.

I'd thrifted some yarn-dyed red striped twill that was trying to pretend it was ticking.  The red had already bled a bit by the time I got it, so I laundered it again in hot water and things didn't seem to get worse, so I...eventually...started snipping and ripping into squares.  Well...almost-squares.  The finished size is 11½" x 12½", because I don't like big flappy napkins, and because I was trying to get as many as possible from the yardage I had.  I ended up with 20.

I looked at the various methods for making mitered corners--lovely as they are, I really didn't want to fold--press--fold again--press again--unfold--trim diagonally--fold again--stitch--flip--press x 80.  The 'fake' mitered corner method seemed to have almost as many steps, and Nancy Zieman's super-cheaty method turned out not to be at all suitable for the cloth I was using.

So I just folded and folded again.  Here's a random corner of a random napkin, and it's not too atrocious

Well OK yes the stripes don't line up.  I didn't take the time to straighten the grain of these, because I wanted the project to be done more than I wanted it to be beautiful.

That happens.

That happens a lot.

But now I have 20 new napkins that actually fit the vague color scheme* I have for the kitchen and made from cloth I paid 99¢ for and the project is done so things're good.

Here's to going another five years before needing to think about napkins again.

*It's red-green-blue.  I said it was vague.

Vintage Creepy Toy Skirt

Remember that disturbing vintage toy print I thrifted on my birthday? I used it!  After having it in my stash for less than a month!  (...barely...)

(Whoo, flashback to my early childhood in the late 1970s.  How did people think pupil-less eyes with what appear to be black sclera was an endearing look?)

No patterns involved, just a bunch of rectangles.  The bottom hem is formed by sewing on the solid piece, pressing up the edge, then folding the whole thing up inside and stitching it in the ditch where it meets the print, so no cut edges are visible.

And the salmony solid of similar texture that had been in the stash for untold years worked out well enough as a match for the print's pink, considering that it's another thrift find.  And I was able to finagle things so that the print placement on the front is exactly the same as the print placement on the back.  So...uh..."front" and "back" here are moot (in all senses of the word.)

The skirt is softly pleated to the waistband, and the lining (also thrifted--pretty sure it was a sheet from which I once scavenged some nice wide eyelet) is gathered to fit the waistband.

It's a bit above knee-length, and I can't imagine wearing it with anything but a black shirt and black tights and black shoes and perhaps a black cardigan, weather permitting. (Oh, please, cardigan weather, please come back.)

...plotting the world's demise...