celebrate color: embroidered accessories for your table

It's hard to believe that Celebrate Color is nearly over. During these three months, I've shared fall colors that I love, embroidery floss color palettes, embroidery patterns, and now today I have a couple projects that incorporate a few of those patterns.

Before I get to those, I do want to remind you that there's still time to enter the Celebrate Color contest. There are some really great prizes for all of the categories, and for the Needlepoint category, you can win my PDF embroidery classes, and a credit from The Split Stitch. It's worth the effort to whip up something special!




Since Thanksgiving is getting oh so near, I thought it would be a good time to put together some quick and easy accessories for your table. The nice thing about these is that, although mine have fall embroidery on them, you can change the design to use any time of the year!



For each napkin ring, you will need:
2.25 x 7 inches wool or wool blend felt
embroidery floss
1 button
lightweight tracing paper

Make a template and cut out the strips of felt.



Embroider your designs onto the center of each strip. Do this by tracing the design onto the tracing paper, pin the paper onto the felt, and stitch through the felt and paper at the same time. Carefully tear away the paper when you are finished.

My napkin rings have the Leaves on the Sidewalk pattern...I've just split up the four sections so that each square is on it's own napkin ring.



At one end of the strip sew on a button.



At the other end of the strip, cut a slit for a button hole.




Repeat with each strip, and wrap your napkins up for the table!




To make a hot pad, you will need:
heavy fabric for the top (the size you want your pad to be)
cotton fabric for the backing (a little larger than your front)
embroidery floss
cotton batting (or Insul-Bright)
pins

Note: Using Insul-Bright will make this much more functional and safe when using with hot dishes. Cotton batting works when this is meant to be more decorative



Embroider the top fabric, then cut to the size you wish. Cut the batting to the same size. Cut the backing fabric to be a little over 1 inch larger on each side.

Layer the fabric as follows: backing (wrong side up), batting, embroidery (right side up).



Fold one side of the backing in to the edge of the batting, finger press, then fold it over again to overlap the top fabric. Pin.



Repeat the folding on the opposite edge, then pin.



Fold one corner over to make a triangle, then repeat at the other end of that side.



Fold down the edge to the batting, then fold it down again, forming a mitered corner.



Pin, and repeat on the remaining side. You may need to adjust these edges a little to get everything to match up correctly, but they will work out!

Additional instructions (which I found to be extremely helpful!) can be found in this tutorial.



Stitch around the edges, making sure you sew the corners. You can do this with a sewing machine, but stitching by hand didn't take very long at all.



You're ready to add some pretty new items to your table decor, as you Celebrate Color this November!