Last week my brother Dan and his wife Ali came to visit us (well, mainly Clara, haha). They live in NYC, where John and I met, so it’s always a treat to have them nearby. It was their first time seeing our new house, and since their visit fell almost exactly on their one-year wedding anniversary I wanted to make a little DIY gift. I also knew I’d use one particular material I’d been holding onto for a year: a pilfered cloth napkin from their wedding reception.
Let me explain. At the time of their wedding I had a three-month-old who wanted to nurse constantly. Amid feedings and greetings, a cloth napkin from the table ended up tucked into my purse/diaper bag. It was likely caught in a blanket or mistaken for a bib — a total mystery. After the reception I actually called the venue to offer to mail it back, but the kind staff member told me it wasn’t worth shipping and to “consider it a gift.” So it came home with us and then quietly lived in our overflowing playroom until their anniversary visit.
John and I tossed around several ideas: make a fabric mat for a framed wedding photo, dye and cut coasters, monogram and attach it to a serving tray. The idea of needlepoint (actually cross-stitch, as I later realized) kept popping into my head, but I didn’t trust myself to execute real needlework with their visit so close. Instead I decided to draw a needlepoint-inspired design directly on the napkin and frame it — a “cheater” cross-stitch look. I sketched a few patterns on graph paper after browsing inspiration online and settled on a simple heart-and-arrow motif.
John and I agreed the little drawing on the right was the winner, so I planned how to transfer it to the napkin. Luckily I had an Ikea frame with a 5 x 7″ opening, which meant I could cut the napkin into fourths and have backups in case a version failed. I laid the napkin over the paper sketch to see if the design showed through — it did — and that made tracing easy.
If the fabric hadn’t been sheer enough I planned to tape both layers to a window to use natural backlight, but it wasn’t necessary. I traced faux-needlepoint Xs around the heart and arrow with a fine-point marker and freehanded dashed letters from my sketch. For detail: the marker I used was a LePen in teal that I’d bought on sale. The ink did bleed slightly on the fabric, but after testing other pens I found I actually preferred the softer, slightly blurred look the LePen produced. It felt more homemade and timeworn than the crisp lines from a ballpoint.
I had four attempts, so I tried the LePen first, then a ballpoint in blue and black, and even a red rolling-ball pen to compare results. The sharper lines looked neat, but the slightly blurred marker lines felt more charming and suited the handmade, sentimental vibe I wanted.
Happy with the first LePen attempt, I popped that quarter of napkin into the Ikea frame.
Here it is hanging on our frame wall so you can see how it reads among other pieces — it’s simple on its own, but plays nicely alongside busier items.
It’s pretty plain by itself, but that’s part of the appeal: its simplicity makes it an easy companion piece in a larger grouping.
Total cost: $0 out of pocket for the gift itself. If you factor in the frame, a marker, and fabric, a similar project would likely cost around twelve dollars. Time spent was minimal — roughly half an hour from start to finish — though my brother might claim it took $100 and five arduous days.
Dan and Ali were genuinely charmed, especially by the story that the napkin came from their wedding venue. Using a meaningful swatch of fabric, a seating card, or a menu from a wedding is a nice way to make a small, personal keepsake to commemorate a special day.
So that’s the tale of a napkin I accidentally took, kept for a year, then found and turned into a little framed anniversary gift. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s inadvertently taken something that wasn’t theirs — or who has a playroom avalanche of odds and ends that need sorting, garage-sale-ing, or repurposing. At least I managed to locate the napkin without assembling a search party, so maybe the playroom isn’t a total disaster. Right?
Wrong. It’s bad.
What have you sketched or framed lately? Any accidental kleptomaniac confessions to make me feel less alone in my little napkin caper?
P.S. After many requests we shared our approach to feeding Clara over on BabyCenter. With our doctor’s blessing, we tried a method called Baby Led Weaning, where she ate the same healthy foods we did (prepared so she could safely handle them) instead of purees. More on that method is available on BabyCenter.