Cloth napkins

I was recently inspired to switch our family to cloth napkins. We have some friends who mentioned once that they use cloth napkins at home, and it got me thinking. We sure do go through a LOT of paper napkins in our family. Then a couple weeks ago, while we were out eating at Olive Garden (with their cloth napkins), we started tossing around the idea again. With cloth napkins, everyone makes it through a whole meal with only one napkin. But at home, a paper napkin doesn't hold up so well. The kids often go through several in one meal. So I thought, let's make the switch! I love projects to work on. ;) I found many links online about making your own cloth napkins, and found that a combined method between these two sites worked best for me: Skip to my Lou and Tammy's Times. I bought some fun prints for the kids that were all 50-60% off at Jo-Ann's Fabrics, and then bought 3 sets of coordinating fat quarters for larger, dinner napkins. This was a more expensive route, but the fat quarters were also on sale and I like having a variety of designs. Overall, though, I spent $52 and made 12 small children's napkins (approx. 12x12), 4 medium napkins for Bella's tea set, and 24 medium dinner napkins for the whole family (approx. 16x16). 40 napkins for $52 dollars... not bad, I think. The small napkins are a perfect size for breakfast and lunch. In hindsight I could have made the dinner napkins a bit larger (as Jake would prefer) if I had bought the fabric off a bolt, but the fat quarters only left me with a 17x17 piece to work with after pre-washing the fabrics.

This is the blue set. I also have a brown set and red set that are waiting to be finished.

After using the napkins for a couple days, we are all happy with them. The kids think they are super cool.