Weddingbee Blog

Guess what guess what guess what!!!

I made napkins!

Okay, not all of them. Not even half, yet. But I made some! Check ‘em out!

Bad lighting, there, sorry. The color is a really bright yellow. More like this:

Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and explain. Remember when I first told you about my napkin project, and how the sewing machine was trying to make my life miserable? Well, we never got the sewing machine to work. That was a while ago, and um… I hadn’t really done anything about it. I gave the sewing machine tons of dirty looks, and I kicked it once or twice as I was walking past it, but nothing productive. I think I was kind of hoping that if I just ignored the problem it would go away (I do that a lot). Only, the problem didn’t go away. And I had a defective sewing machine and tons of napkins waiting to be sewn to remind me of the problem every. single. day.

So. I decided to do something about it. BM Audrey’s grandmother happened to have a sewing machine that is much nicer and newer than the one I had (which belonged to BM Audrey’s mom), and she was gracious enough to let me borrow it.

A few days ago, I went to trade out the sewing machine, and I’m not even exaggerating when I tell you that I was scared to test out the new machine. Terrified, actually. When I got home with it, I put it on the table and ignored it for a few hours. Then, when I finally got up the courage to actually test it out, I just stared at it for a good five minutes before I pressed down on the foot petal. I was terrified that I would hear the same horrible motor-is-dying sound that I heard with the other sewing machine.

So, you can imagine my joy when I pressed on the petal and it actually SEWED. I was so happy I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I quickly finished the first napkin and ran into the bedroom where Mr. Cardy was taking a nap and I jumped into bed and woke him up by shoving the napkin in his face. Once he got over the shock of being woken up so rudely (he also had the dogs licking his face, of course) he was extremely excited as well (or at least, he pretended to be, which was smart).

My excitement after I finished a napkin. Notice the slightly manic look in my eyes? Yeah, I needed this sewing machine to work!

So yes, we are going to have handmade napkins at our wedding! Are they perfect? Hell, no. Am I insanely proud of them? YES! It’s so exciting to see the stack of finished napkins growing, and I’m having a blast sewing them. After all that I’ve been through with this project, I really think it’s going to be one of the things I am most proud of at the wedding!

I do have one question for you sewing pros out there, though (or really, anyone with more sewing knowledge than me… which is just about everyone). When I was cutting them, I didn’t exactly cut in straight lines. I tried really hard, but I just couldn’t do it. So some of them look a little silly on the back, like this:

Look at how long the leftover fabric is after the stitching! Whoops!

What can I do about that? Can I trim off the excess? Will it fray? What can I do to stop the fraying? Help!