Napkin’s Online « ceo a's draiocht

April, it’s that time. Let’s talk about Easter bling. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll see me repeating the same suppliers for napkins, designs and fabric as well as the notation that I like to ship fun little gifts off to folks. I made this Easter runner a few years back with fabric from JoAnn for myself and my sister. They no longer carry the really nicely done glittered fabrics. For these, I’ve had to turn to elsewhere, but this fabric was a find and the glitter is oh so perfect. I simply cut my long rectangle, cut a piece of light interfacing (sew-in) and a back. Sew around the edges, turn out and top stitch in a bit from the edge. La Voila! Instant table runner.

The hemstitched napkins, as usual, are from Napkins Online at eBay. I must allow myself to digress here and alert you to the fact that Napkins Online currently has 6 foot linen table runners in various colors for $4.00. Depending on the amount you pick up, you may be able to get free shipping. Being the noodge I am, I ordered mine before posting this to avoid the rush J . I believe the egg design is a Husqvarna Viking free monthly design from 2009 that you could purchase from MyEmbroideries.com; I did look but couldn’t find the design at either Embroidery Library or My Embroideries. This month they are offering an Easter design you can edit/crop back to look very similar to the eggs I’ve used on the napkins. Sulky 40 weight embroidery threads that I pick up on sale or with a coupon from the stores or online is my thread of choice. As long as you don’t use bleach, they stand up to washing and light wear pretty well.

The kitchen towels are from New England’s Christmas Tree Shops. My sister mails them off to me; I decorate and hem them, and mail them back. They’re the microfiber towels that you can also pick up in packs at places like Ross. The hem on this set is simply purchased Wrights extra wide double fold bias trim. The basket is from Embroidery Library, the design that is on their drawstring bag. Yes, the baskets aren’t lined up perfectly – originally I was going for one for me and one for sis when she let it be known she likes three for her stove – so the bottoms are a tad off as far as matchy matchy. If you’re planning to put things together – best to always measure from the bottom edge when placing your design. I usually change the colors and size of any design to suit my needs. The egg design on the turquoise kitchen towel is a monthly free design (March2010) from Husqvarna Viking that you then download from MyEmbroideries.com (or purchase if you don’t download it in the month offered). They also offer free monthly embroidery projects and sewing projects if you’d like more sewing ideas. I’d tagged a slew of the sewing ones to add to my “to do” list.

For the bath, I use the pack of white hand towels from Costco. Just make sure to use colors that match the main bath when choosing embroidery threads. You might not notice that in the pictures I post as many of these holiday decorating items are gifts and you don’t see the hand towel sitting on top of a color coordinated bath towel – it does look nice. So, the first time I gift them I may buy two plush bath towels for the recipient that match their color, note the thread that most perfectly matches the towels I picked so I can always incorporate it into the design to yield a matching set, and gift those bath towels with a few holiday decorated hand ones. Then, for close friends and relatives, they may periodically receive a matching holiday set in the mail. The design is Embroidery Library’s Spring Stitches – Bunnies. If I were to do it over, I’d make the callas closer to yellow so they’d stand out more. In person, you can see them do to the texture and light created by the thread and design. With the dense designs on towels, it’s best to take them out of the dryer a wee tad less than dry and press the back of the design with an iron so it’ll lie perfectly flat and look new.

So celebrate spring with a bit of fresh décor and fun colors. As always, you can build on these items by using hand embroidery, appliqué, stencils and fabric paints if you don’t machine embroider.

This post is participating in the Linky parties noted below.

Don’t do a massive overhaul of the home or tablescaping for each holiday, but I do enjoy a few perky little elements sprinkled here and there. The embroidery machine (Husqvarna Viking Topaz) let’s me accomplish this so simply. As I’ve mentioned in a few other posts, the easiest way is to pick up white hand towels and match your thread to the other colors of the bath, scout and add a border to the smaller microfiber towels or find kitchen towels to meet your needs – my previous posts list favored suppliers and resources.

For my own kitchen, I found Ikea towels and was able to match the threads to them exactly. All of the designs except the teddy bear are Embroidery Libraryand named at the bottom of this post.

I edit the colors, sizes and overlap in 4D Embroidery Extra. This program defaults to “remove overlap” which works well if you’re stacking hearts, like the towels I gifted above, or solid areas of overlap. However, I learned with the teddy bears below that you want to shut “remove overlap” off if you are placing lettering on top of a design. It creates oodles of stops, starts and jump stitches and it does not look as solid and smooth as if the wording were placed on top of a solid design. The towel on the right below is my edited version where I didn’t stop the program from “removing overlap” when I added the “I’m Yours” so I could have a matching set. Also, some vendors do not put a code (say Urban Threads has UT as part of a design name when you download it). This means after a year or more of collecting designs – unless you’re smart enough to note it when you first download – you’ll have no idea where a design came from. The teddy bear is one of those designs for me. Now I always add a few letters to the filename so I know where the design is from. If someone emails me or I find the vendor – I’ll update this post to note it who sells the teddy bear.

The kitchen towels below are mostly my editing program and fonts. The heart outlines are from the Hearts and Ribbon Bridal Border. I love the touch large rik rak brings to kitchen towels and mentioned my favorite ebay supplier of it in one of my earlier linked posts. Personalizing the towel just brings that extra glimmer of fun to gifts.

I’ve also mentioned Napkins Online in many posts. If you machine or hand embroider or simply decorate with appliqué and trims – they have great napkins to start with. The Simply Sweathearts design was used “as is” – no editing as it was perfect for the application