Here is the next holiday project tutorial including a video which we hope you will follow along and get some quick and easy holiday sewing done!

Today we have a set of simple embroidered table napkins where we get the embroidery done on FOUR napkins in ONE hooping. Then just cut them apart, serge a rolled hem around each nakpin and voila! you have one-of-kind Holiday table linens! We would love to see what napkins you make so be sure to tag us on Instagram and Facebook with photos of what you make!

Here is the link to the video tutorial where we show how to embroider a set of table napkins and finish the raw edges easily and with no fuss at all. All details are addressed on the video.  Please see the photo’s below showing our red Holiday napkins with snowflake embroidery. 

Supplies used: You will see in the pic below that I choose to make a set of 4 napkins on red cotton fabric with white polyester embroidery thread.

• Fabric: you can cut from approx  18 inches square (which yields smaller cocktail napkins) to larger napkins where you can cut a square about 28-30 inches. You will see later that each napkin ends up about 1/4 of that size – so from about 9-15 inches square – depends on your requirements. If you cut WOF of a quilting cotton, about 44 inches x 22 inches, you would then cut that in half and in 2 hoopings you would have a set of 8 napkins. I will leave further maths up to you!
• Stabilizer: I used wash away stabilizer so that I did not need to pick out bits of tearaway stabilizer afterwards. I used Madeira Avalon Plus as my designs totaled almost 30,000 stitches so a thin water soluble would not have worked. I needed something a little stronger to support the embroidery until I washed the stabilizer away. Tearaway is not recommended as you will be having to tear out all those little bits afterwards. Washaway is much easier to remove.
• Thread: I used Hilos Iris polyester embroidery thread (white on my red fabric) which is available trough our Janome Canada dealers as we distribute this thread in Canada.  White pre-wound bobbin thread (Janome brand) was used in the yellow dot bobbin case.
• Needle: I used a Janome red tip needle – I use these for virtually all my machine embroidery. 
• Design used: I selected the snowflake in the Redwork design section of the Janome MC15000. (redwork category design # 4) If you do not have the Janome Mc15000, of course, you have lots of other options:  **You can digitize your own snowflake with our wonderful Artistic Digitizer software (here is a link to a video showing how to digitize a snowflake); **you can probably find a snowflake built into your Janome embroidery machine or amongst your design collection ( you do have a design stash like you fabric stash – right?);  ** OR you can download a design from the internet (free or purchased). **Another options is to look through the designs on AcuDesign App and see if there is something there that you might like to use?  The design used here was a little over 3 x 4 inches in size which was fairly large for these little napkins and took about 40 minutes to stitch out. However, I did not resize them in Artistic Digitizer. I left them as is. Of course, you do not need to use a snowflake. You could choose any small, festive or holiday theme design you wish.
• Reversible embroidery: Please be sure to use the same colour thread in your BOBBIN as in the needle so that your design is reversible (Why? – this is explained on the video). Remember that if you have colour changes in your design you will need to change the bobbin each time you thread up a new colour in the needle with a matching bobbin colour as well.
• Serger: I used 3 cones of red serger thread for the rolled hem around each of the napkins.

First is to hoop the stabilizer and baste the napkin fabric to the stabilizer after carefully centering the fabric

All four designs embroidered in one corner of each napkin.

Next is to cut the embroidered fabric into 4 napkins. It is now ready for serging a rolled hem around all 4 sides of each napkin.

Please note that these napkins may be embroidered on almost any of our Janome embroidery machines. We are using the Janome MC15000 in the video and in the pics above but so long as you can arrange 4 little embroidery designs around the centre of the hoop, you can do this project – yay!

Here is another set of embroidered table napkins with a little floral designs. This shows the embroidery before the fabric is cut into 4 napkins and then finished around the edges.

You can use a Janome serger (any of our Janome sergers will do this) to make a 3 thread rolled hem to finish the raw edges of the napkins.  Click here for a video on doing a serger rolled hem. I think that is the quickest and easiest although you can also do a narrow hem using our narrow hem foot if you prefer. Click on this video if you want to see how to do a narrow hem. And there are other finishing options such as a fold over mitered corner technique or adding a facing or binding but we won’t explain those options in this post.