Homemade Everyday Cloth Napkin

DIY FABRIC NAPKIN TUTORIAL

A great way to save money on paper products and start to go zero-waste is to sew earth-friendly cloth napkins.  This tutorial will show you how to sew a super simple everyday cloth napkin.  Sewing your own fabric napkins is fun and is an easy sewing project for beginners.  

Another money-saving and zero-waste paper product idea is to make and use unpaper towels instead of expensive disposable paper towels. Keep them handy for drying hands, cleaning up spills and more. This tutorial will show you how to make unpaper towels by repurposing old towels. 

At the end of this article are more zero waste projects for your home (i.e. grocery tote bag, produce bag, t-shirt yarn, and more).

Let's get back to making cloth napkins! Learn more about making them by watching our video or keep reading this post for a photo tutorial with step-by-step instructions.

HOW TO make CLOTH NAPKINs

The napkin, you will learn today, is the most common way store-brought napkins are finished.  Of course, you can purchase fabric but these napkins can be a great fabric stash buster project if you use pretty fabric from your scrap bin.  

No time to sew napkins but you want to be part of the planet-friendly movement.  You can purchase basic and cute cloth napkins at Etsy or at Amazon. 

INSTRUCTIONS for diy cloth napkins

STEP 1: Fabric Preparation

For the best result, you should prewash/preshrink the fabric.  If you want to prevent fraying when you wash the fabric, check out our tutorial. 

Once the fabric is washed, iron the fabric to remove wrinkles. 

STEP 2: Cutting Fabric For The Cloth Napkin

After the fabric is washed and ironed, with a rotary cutter or scissor and ruler, cut an 18” x 18” square of fabric.

STEP 3: Cut Corners

When hemming the napkin, the corners would be very bulky and thick if you left the corners intact.    To reduce the bulkiness, a small portion of each corner of the napkin will be cut off.

To do this, with a sewing gauge fold each corner toward the center ½” and press.

Cut along the crease line with a scissor.

After cutting the other corners off, your napkin will look like this.

The napkin will be hemmed one side at a time. To hem the first side, place the fabric on the ironing board with the wrong side up, using your handy dandy sewing gauge, fold the fabric toward the wrong side ½”.  Use an iron to press the hem firmly in place. 

Fold the fabric 1/2" toward the wrong side again, press and pin it in several places to hold it secure.

Before beginning to sew the hem, it is important to think about the bobbin thread.  The color in the bobbin will be visible on the front of the napkin.

To hem this first side, simply edgestitch along the inside fold, backstitching at the beginning and end.  Our edgestitch tutorial may be helpful.

STEP 5: Repeat 

Repeat step 4 on the other three sides. Turn the fabric clockwise or counter-clockwise, fold the fabric 1/2" toward the wrong side, press, fold under again ½”, press, pin and edgestitch.

The above photo shows the back of the napkin.

After hemming all sides, the napkin is done!   Kids would love using cloth napkins when sewn out of kids fun themed fabric.  With holiday prints, you can whip up napkins in no time to create a festive table.

Once you know this technique, you can use it to make tablecloths and table toppers and many other sewing projects.

We hope you enjoyed this DIY coth napkin tutorial and decide to make some for your home.  Check out our DIY Kitchen Projects Pinterest Board for lots of sewing, machine embroidery and quilting projects for the kitchen.   

If you are into recycling, repurposing and reusing, you may be interested in our Recycling Craft Projects Pinterest Page. 

Happy Sewing!

Other zero-waste tutorials

• DIY Zero Waste Produce Bag
• How to make dishcloth or washcloth from old towels.
• T-shirt tote bag tutorial
• Fabric Shopping Bag Tutorial
• How to Make T-Shirt Yarn
• Reusable Snack Bags.
• How to Make Plastic Bag Yarn
• How to Sew a Napkin with a Rolled Hem and your serger