DIY Wedding : Dinner Napkins

This is what I did all weekend. I sewed 82 dinner napkins for the wedding reception. After hearing that it was $.50/napkin to rent plain white ones from our caterer, I figured that it would be less expensive and more fun to have some homemade ones that gave more of a picnic vibe. The assortment of fabrics were collected over the past ten months. There's some vintage tablecloths and sheets in there, some yardage that I got on sale and a few that I just couldn't pass up. Overall I think that I only spent $30 on fabric and already had the thread. Overall - not the hugest savings really, but I still think that they will be a lot more festive on the tables than plain old white. Plus we can keep them and they are reusable!

The fabric stash was also the supply for the jam jar toppers for the favors and for the garland so hopefully it won't seem too haphazard when it's all set up.

Last weekend I also create a guest book out of a photo album kit that my Mom gave me several years ago so that was free. It's not posted because it's waiting for Ron to decorate the front of it with some hand-lettering first. I also made my bridal fascinator. I'm not going to post that though because I want to keep it a surprise til Ron sees me that morning.

And now with the napkins done, I'm officially done with all of my major DIY wedding projects. A few more small tidbits here and there but nothing major. I can't tell you how excited I am to work on something other than the wedding!

Wedding DIY : Flag Garland

I had a lot of extra fabric leftover after cutting napkins and favor tops so I decided to make some flag garlands to decorate the reception tent. For white and cream, I used an old sheet that had ripped and some very inexpensive muslin. I didn't want to have to sew anything and found that the range of fabrics didn't all take to glue in the same way. A friend (thanks Meghan!) suggested using brads - a standard office product usually used to attach papers. On the thicker fabrics, I had to create a small hole first for the brad whereas some of the lighter weight fabrics I could just poke them right though. (I found old tweezers did just the right job for creating a small hole.) I like that the brads look a bit like embroidery tacks.

I used 45' cotton cord and made 4 of them and have enough fabric left that I could maybe make one more. I'd been hoping to hang them out on the porch for the photo but it's been raining almost every evening for 3 weeks and I haven't been able to get outside much. I still think that they are really cheerful.