Hand made cocktail napkins

My friend Berta has moved to a new home, and I'm going over there to see it (and her) next week. Of course I want to bring a "Happy New Home" present, and not just a bottle of wine.

One of my favorite things that I found among my mother's store of linens was a little pile of small napkins.

We would call them "cocktail napkins" because they're much smaller than dinner napkins. I think they were my grandmother's, and I'm guessing she called them "luncheon napkins," because no decent woman would admit to any knowledge of cocktails in her day. They are obviously hand made - they are not a uniform size and they have that delicate pulled-thread decoration around the hemmed edges that women did a hundred years ago. No one has the time or knowledge for it today, which is a pity.

I decided Berta would like some hand made cocktail napkins in her new home. She and I definitely admit to cocktails, or at least wine, so let's call them what they are. And I would be willing to make them, although I'm not willing to start pulling threads.

I shopped around in my stash of fabric and found this fun dotted cotton I used a while ago to make pillow cases. It's a really nice fabric with a good cottony feel to it, and would make very cute cocktail napkins. I had enough left to make a set of six and, even better, I had already washed the fabric before I used it the last time. One less thing to do.

Using a paper cocktail napkin as a template, I cut 6 identical pieces from the fabric, each 11 inches square. This will leave me a 10-inch square napkin after hemming, which is the size of the paper napkin.

Then I started ironing. Yes, it's true - most of the process of making these little napkins involves the steam iron, and only near the last did I touch my sewing machine. This is fortunate for me, because I'm still running my sewing machine with my left foot, my right foot firmly encased in a big space boot because of my healing broken ankle. However, the future looks bright, because next week I'm supposed to try to fit, finally, into a shoe. My shoe. Here's hoping I find one that fits.

The process
Take one of the 11-inch squares and press a 1/4-inch hem on all four sides. Then work your way around and turn the hem a second time 1/4 inches and press each side, using steam to set the folds. Then, to make mitred corners, cut across each corner like this.

Holding the first fold in place, fold the corner up and join the edges of the folds to make the mitre.

This takes some bulk out of the corner's doubled double fold and leaves a nicely finished corner.

Next, press all the folds once again on the wrong side, and sidle on over to your sewing machine. I like to sew on the right side when it shows, because I'm convinced the stitch is more attractive on the top side. You can stitch on the other side if you want to, because it's easier to see that you're catching the fold. Either way will work fine.

I like to open up the length of my stitch a bit, so I set my length at 2.8. It makes for a prettier stitch and a little less bunching.

Sew the hem, whether on the right side or the other side, all the way around, pivoting at the corners. Then press both back and front again, and press into a 5-inch square.

Here's the finished result of the stitching, front and back

And here's the final stack of napkins, ready to be gifted! Hope Berta likes them!

 

My ankle is back!

This is a long process. But it hasn't been as long as it might be, thanks to an innovative surgeon and good bones.  The surgeon, who had performed more than 3000 of these same surgeries, said to me after mine, "for your age, you have very good bones." I am grateful.

Yesterday I graduated from cast to boot, 6 weeks into it. Yay! More freedom...showers can be taken without protective plastic, sometimes my leg and my foot can get fresh air.  OMG.

When I looked at my leg - 6 weeks under plaster and plastic - it was flaking skin in sheets. So dry. I washed it with zinc soap, good for bacteria, and soaked it in heavy-duty moisturizer and then coconut oil and let it absorb. More skin flaked off and I rubbed it with towels and more coconut oil before reapplying the orthopedic sock and the boot. Oh what luxury for my poor skin!

They said "wear the boot for two or three weeks, then try to fit into a shoe." Wow. That means in about two weeks I can wear a shoe. And walk in it. And then maybe I can drive (this is my right foot, so no driving until it is well).

Today I went to my beloved yoga instructor Domonick for a private lesson.  "Tell me what I can do to strengthen this leg and to maintain flexibility and heal." He created a wonderful program for me to follow for the next month or two until I can resume a regular practice.  Stretch. Strengthen. Be peaceful. Breath. Stretch. Strengthen. Heal. Thank you, and bless you, Domonick. Bless you, my leg.

Short story, I'm doing well, thank you. Tomorrow night we're going out to a club, but I might not dance yet.

Red Lace

I'm working on my old unfinished sewing projects once again, this time finishing the sarong-style skirt, which just needed hemming.  First thing, I looked through my odds and ends to see if I had any red hem binding. Nope. Everything else but red. Well, I had a bag of my mom's sewing things that I'd brought home from the big garage sale we had. Maybe in there.

I couldn't have been more surprised. Not only did I find red seam binding, I found a length of really nice red lace. My mom? Red lace? I remember at one time she was into making lingerie - slips and things like that. But I certainly couldn't imagine she'd have made a bright red slip. It just didn't seem like my mom.

Well, moms are women too, and how much do you really know about your mom, personally? Not so much apparently. Woo-hoo! Mom!

I read that Jackie Kennedy had all the linings in her dresses made with lace at the bottom, like a slip. If it's good enough for Jackie, it's good enough for me!







Lace made a lovely hem binding for my skirt. Here's the hem, and now the skirt is all done. It's possible I might wear it after all, rather than give it away. It's really pretty fabulous.

On to the next thing, which is both a wearable "reward" for having finished another old project and an unfinished project in itself. I only started it about 4 months ago, so it doesn't really qualify as an Ancient. It's a white linen skirt, lined. I haven't been sure whether I will really like a white skirt, but I've decided to make a black and white lace overskirt/apron thingy to go over it and now I know I'll like it. Maybe I'm into lace all of a sudden!

Making progress

I'm better now - healing. After an incredibly short 2 1/2 weeks, I'm back on my feet. Thanks to an innovative Kaiser Permanente surgeon who believes you heal better if you start moving sooner rather than later, I'm in a walking cast . . . and walking.

Sweet joy, I have some of my life back.

Here's my leg in its new cast, actually standing on the floor. I can walk up stairs now, although I still slide down stairs on my butt because I'm afraid I'll fall. I can carry a glass of water. I can carry dishes from the dishwasher into the dining room. I can stand at the stove to cook. I can shower if I cover my cast with plastic.

It's definitely the little things you miss when you can't do them.

I still use crutches when I have to go a long way, but I'm not hopping anymore, I'm walking. I do get tired, but it's so much better.

Yay!!

Oopsie!

There I was, cute as a bug in my new outfit (pictured in the post below), bidding my friend Yvette "good night". We had met in San Francisco for dinner and wine at Frances, a trendy (and very good!) restaurant in the Castro District, and then cabbed back downtown - Yvette to her home and me to BART to train back to Oakland. I closed the cab door and headed for the stairs to go down into the Civic Center BART station.

Suddenly I was down on the steps, clinging to a railing and looking at my right foot, shoeless in its brown tights. The foot was pointed in a bad direction. And my ankle was swelling to twice its size. At first it didn't even hurt, but then.... ouch, ouch. I had tripped, my shoe had gone sailing, and I had hurt my foot. Even in the shock of the first few seconds, I knew. I had really hurt my foot.

Two women stood near me, one on each side, and I looked up at them. They were both looking down at me. One of them said, "Are you all right?" "I don't think I can stand on my foot," I said. Many people were passing by on the stairs. Some of them looked. One of the women said loudly, "Get the police, get the station manager." The other woman stood in front of me on the steps and looked around.

In a few minutes two BART policemen came running. "What happened? What's your name? Do you want us to call an ambulance?" The women stayed.

"Yes, I think I need an ambulance." I picked up my cell phone and dialed Wayne. He answered. "Wayne, I'm hurt." And we went from there. The women stayed.

Since the police were also there, I said to the woman nearest me, "You can go. Thank you so much for being here with me." And she left. The other woman said, "I'm going to stand here below you so no one can look up your skirt." Well, I hadn't thought of that. And anyway, I had tights on so what would they see? But it was very protective and sweet, and I smiled at her and said, "Thank you".

The ambulance came and whisked me off to Kaiser Hospital Emergency Room, where Wayne met me. We spent a long night with their very kind and professional staff getting me put together well enough to go home. The ankle was broken in two places. Then I went back the next day to have surgery and here I am, in a cast and pretty much couch, chair, and bed-bound. With my "toes above my nose". Drat.

In every story, there's some good news. In this story the good news is I just happened to get the best ankle surgeon in California, and maybe in the whole country. This is according to all the nurses at Kaiser. He is an innovator, who believes you heal better if you're on your feet by two weeks after surgery, unlike the 6 weeks that's traditional. That's very good news for me because I think I'd go crazy confined this way for 6 weeks, and two weeks is next week. I am optimistic.

The other good news is those wonderful women who rallied around a fallen sister and didn't move. They didn't know each other and they certainly didn't know me, but there's something about women that's pretty special. I'm celebrating a personal Women's Appreciation Day in my heart. Thank you, Ladies.

The new skirt reward

When I finished the corduroy jumper last week, I promised to make something current that I like and want to wear as a reward to myself before going on to the next unfinished project. Here I am wearing my reward, a fine-wale corduroy paisley skirt to go with the vintage aqua sweater Wayne's fashionista daughter, Marja, gave me for Christmas.

Pretty cool fabric, huh? Here's what it looks like up close.


 The light blue matches the sweater perfectly and I think the whole outfit has a 50s vibe to it. I like it quite a bit - very fun and comfortable too. I made it using an Amy Butler pattern called "barcelona skirts" that I've used several times before. In fact, my daughter-in-law Allie turned me on to it after she used it to make some skirts. It's lined, and is quite fast and easy, which is always nice - instant gratification!

Now I'm on to the next unfinished project. Here it is, a long wrapped skirt that only needs hemming. Kind of a pretty, tropical looking fabric, isn't it? I think I'll leave it ankle-length. Should be able to finish that tomorrow or the next day. I'll let you know.


Unfinished business

It seems I have even more unfinished business than I thought. (see The Hutch)  While going through my closet for candidates for donation to the White Elephant Sale, I found three sewing projects I had started and never finished. Well, to be honest, one was passed on to me by someone else, but still it was a project to be finished. Aha! I thought. The White Elephant Sale takes unfinished sewing projects - I've seen the rack of them in the sewing section. I bagged them up and happily carried them to the Sale the next time we went.

Alas. The guardian at the donation door said they had enough unfinished sewing projects, thank you very much. And I had to bring them back home.

What to do with them? I hate to throw good fabric and hard work out, but I was never going to wear any of these. Well, the Sale would take them if they were finished, of course, and two of these projects had minimum work left to do on them. It's just that I had lost interest. So why not finish them and then donate them?

I told myself: I will finish one and then reward myself by sewing something "real" that I like and will wear. Then I will do the next unfinished one, and so on until I'm done with the three.

The first was a corduroy jumper I started maybe 40 years ago. Maybe even before that. I did a really nice job on it, lining the top with plaid flannel and finishing it nicely. The only thing left to do was the buttons and all but three of the buttonholes ... all the way down the front. I think the buttonholes discouraged me. So many dratted buttonholes. I hate to make buttonholes.

So I left it forever, moving it from closet to closet and home to home. The matching buttons, all 12 of them, lived in the pocket of the jumper. Until today.

Yay!!! I just finished the jumper and I did it without having to do 9 more buttonholes, or even sewing on 12 buttons.

I sewed on the 3 buttons that I already had buttonholes for, and added a fourth to make an even march of buttons down the front of the bodice to the waistline. At the waistline, I used a large heavy snap behind and under the button.

Then I used 3 more heavy snaps down the front of the skirt and left the front open beyond that point. Styles are less conservative today than when I started this jumper - well, in some ways. That would have been soon after hippie times, and that wasn't really what you'd call conservative, was it?

Anyway. No more buttonholes, no more buttons, and the jumper is finally finished. Yes, it still fits, but it is no longer my style. I have outgrown corduroy jumpers, but someone much younger will probably love it. I'm going to send it out into the world.

One more step toward finishing all that unfinished business!