When you sit down to eat...

...once in a while it's nice not just to arm sweep the day's detritus to one side and eat around it, but to actually lay the table. Tablecloths are out because a tiny person here has the ability to pull it clean off when my back is turned. So I made some place settings. I had this pile of tea towels to use, I thought I might make aprons with them but then this became more attractive. The backs, the napkins and pockets are made from the tea towels and the front pieces are bits I had in my fabric pile.

I snipped a tea towel in half. One half I hemmed the raw edge and that was the napkin. The other half became the back of the place mat. One towel I used for the sole purpose of snipping into pockets. They were all easy to put together and involved lots of pinning. I love pinning things before I sew them, excessively so. I use more pins than needed but I don't care, it looks so neat! I get to be a perfectionist and it is easy too so it's a satisfying way of getting that doing-something-well-feeling fix.



See the cute pigs? Who will have the pig one I asked? And without a pause everyone shouted out my dh's name. He had the good grace to laugh along with the rest of us. But yk, what else was he gonna do? Cry? Nah, he's not that precious. He snorted (rather like a pig) with the rest of us and laughed merrily.





When the napkins are pulled out (or tossed into the wash) they can be flipped over for another meal, which also hides the mess from the previous one, handy.



Although I have to say, pretty though they may be, they will be one off uses I think, or for special meal times.... they clutter the table up a bit much and I noticed Felix pushed his to the side because he didn't want to put his bowl on to his (not I might add because he was worried about spillages, no, rather because it was 'bumpy' what ever that might mean). I laughed at that. But you know, I like them, and I'd make them again. I had to, it burst out of me, there was no holding it back. They are done. And they were 'done' on three consecutive nights in fifteen minute slots while the bath was running and the stair gate was shut so The Beauty was free to rampage. And rampage she did, uninterrupted and satisfyingly so. Just like my sewing.