Curry-proof napkins

At the request of my friend Erika, I've been making a set of 8 napkins. Her request was for some every-day napkins that would wash easily and of a color that would disguise any potential curry stains. I had some dark red 8/2 cotton that was just the right color. She picked out some patterns that appealed to her, and I did a sample with 6 versions so she could feel the fabric and pick out what she wanted.

We settled on Davison's Shadow Twill draft, tromp as writ. Note that the sample of Treadling 1 in her book does a really interesting diagonal netting pattern with a lot of draw in. I think it would be very interesting to alternate in stripes with a plain weave pattern for a seersucker effect.

Anyway, the weaving part of my napkin endeavor had to wait until this weekend because last weekend I was in a 2-day workshop on Tablet Weaving with John Mullarkey. Wow, was that eye opening. I had a vague idea of how cards could be used, but I hadn't ever gotten around to trying it. We did threaded-in color patterns, and double-faced weave, and egyptian diagonals. I have many plans for projects with those techniques. My step-mom has requested a keychain with her name on it already :) The kittehs may need custom made collars. The ideas are endless. I will take pictures of some of my samples one of these days. The light is terrible today, as you will see from the napkins.

And back to the napkins. I used some spools of 100% cotton Gutermann thread for the hems. Wow, did it work out well! The hems aren't bulky at all, and the color was a great match. My only complaint is the price of the thread. I'll have to watch for sales at Joanns and Hancocks when I'm in need of thread. I put the thread spools directly on my shuttle in the place of a bobbin, so I saved a ton of time by not having to wind bobbins with sewing thread. Yay for that!

I cut the napkins off this morning while Brent was at church:


Then while they were in the wash, Brent and I went to lunch. After lunch I put on a Craftlit Podcast (an old one as I am working my way through the archives), and I did the pressing and hemming. My iron was on super-steam settings so I had to put the napkins over the railing to dry a bit after I finished the pressing.



Look at that amazingly similar row of napkins. I'm quite impressed with my ability to make 8 things alike. I've never done that before :) I usually end up switching something part way through, but since these were for a friend, I pushed onward and measured carefully and they came out wonderfully.

On another topic, I got the distressing news that blogger will no longer support publishing via FTP as of the end of March. That means I won't be able to use them anymore. Brent has installed wordpress for me so I can play around with it and hopefully get that going.

I'm also participating in this year's knitting olympics with a sweater project for myself--the February Lady Sweater available on ravelry. Fun! I should go take a shower and get to knitting.

Happy Valentines Day!