handmade cloth napkins using japanese cat fabric from lecien
Sewing

Cloth Napkins Featuring Watson the Cat

I was extremely lucky to make a trip to Japan’s Nippori Textile Town about a month before 2020 showed its true colors. The suitcase full of fabric that I brought home fueled months of dreams and adventures in my head, even as I was trapped in my sewing room. Of course, now I’ve barely made a dent in that stash of fabric, and I’m itching to return. What can I say, fabric shopping is the best part of sewing.

And only in Japan would I get so excited about fabric featuring cats.

handmade cloth napkins using japanese cat fabric from lecien

I’m not a cat person, but I found this fabric and just loved it. The cat is giving the most cat-like, don’t-mess-with-me stare, and it’s fantastic. More than anything, this made me think of Watson, Hannah’s (okay, technically Hannah’s husband’s) black cat. He’s particular, as cats are, but more than anything he loves trying to escape to the outdoors as often as possible. So it seems incredibly likely that he’d end up under a tree, like this cat, staring back at the house like, “What.”

I don’t often sew for other people, I tend to be a selfish sewist (luckily I’m not alone, currently #selfishsewing has almost 95k posts). But when sewing for someone else means I can buy more Japanese fabric… well… I guess that persuades me to become more generous.

This fabric is a mid-weight cotton, thicker than quilting cotton, so it’s great for home dec. I decided it would make a perfect table runner + napkin set. Blue is a good match for Hannah and Adam’s Fiestaware dishes, and they always use placemats because they’re fancy like that. So I figured they’d get good use out of cloth napkins, or maybe they could even use these as placemats.

For the napkins, I used the Purl Soho mitered corner napkins tutorial. Highly recommend! They were simple to make and have such nice, clean edges. There was lots of ironing but that was the only tedious part. For the table runner, I used the remaining long strip of fabric and bound the edges with a coordinating blue bias tape. I’ve mentioned this before, but thanks to good luck at estate sales, I have a collection of bias tape that never fails. This blue was a perfect match and I also managed to use all but about 2 inches of it.

At the edge, I folded back the selvedge to keep it as part of the project. I love that it shows that it was made in Japan, plus it has another tiny little Watson cat. I love selvedge details like that. I added a little loop to the back for hanging, just in case, because it felt like a fun fancy touch.

Napkins are fun to make because they’re a great way to show off fun fabrics, and they’re also a nice palate cleanser in between more involved projects. I have a few more cute Japan fabrics that I bought with the intention of making napkins, and I think that would be a good upcoming project – I haven’t been motivated to sew much lately, and an instant gratification project like this always helps me get back into happy sewing mode.

This was also fun because I got to send Hannah surprise mail! And we all know that surprise mail mid-pandemic was about 1000x more exciting than normal surprise mail (and even normal surprise mail is pretty dang exciting).

One Comment

  • Mama

    Very well done, Samantha!! This fabric is so cute and the bias tape is a perfect match.
    It sure is nice to make a fun, less involved project sometimes. Such a thoughtful surprise:)

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