September 30th, 2017 was my second official #HunkiedorieHarvestParty. A fall harvest style dinner where I invite my friends for a night of good food and great company all for an amazing cause, to collect donations and raise awareness for Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota.

This year I really wanted to step up my game, last year was great but I knew I could do better this year. I did this by really focusing on the smaller details. One of the details I focused on was my napkins. Last year I just used plum colored paper napkins. That wasn’t gonna cut it this year.

I was lucky to have my grandma in town the week before this year’s party. She helped me so much, I couldn’t have done it without her. She taught me all about making patterns and working with fabric. Below is a step by step guide on how to make your own flannel napkins.

1. Buy your material.
   I purchased mine at JoAnn Fabrics. I think I got around six different patterned flannels, two yards each.
2. Make your pattern.
   My Grandma measured one of the cloth napkins we use for our Christmas dinners, it was 14″ x 14″. We then cut tissue paper-our patterns- with those dimensions. We made about six patterns.
3. Measure it out.
   Next, we played out our pattern on our material to see how many napkins we could get out of each cut, making sure to avoid the selvaged edges.
4. Time to cut.
   Now that everything was measured out we just simply had to cut around the patterns.
5. Fray it.
   Use a seam ripper to fray your edges (pull out some of the threads). We ended up fraying about 1/4″ on each side.

The napkins were such a huge hit at the party. Such a simple process and a small detail in the grand scheme of things but they really had a huge impact on how each place setting turned out. We simply placed a folded napkin atop each place setting and layered out silverware tied with twine on top of each napkin. We had toyed with the idea of adding in rosemary sprigs to each silverware bundle but time was short (maybe next year.). A little bonus of making our own napkins was the extra material we had leftover. We only made two extra napkins, which meant we had a lot of leftovers. I had been inspired by my friend Danielle of Oh.So.Neat last time I was at her home. She had what she called a table throw on her fall table and I instantly fell in love. I saved my extra material for her to use as throws on my harvest tables and they turned out perfect. You can see all my pictures from this year’s and last year’s harvest party on my Facebook Page.

Hunkiedorië

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