Friday, May 27, 2011

A Belated Mother's Day Craft



One of the best things about my mother in law is her true love of handmade gifts... especially if the girls are involved in the making of them.

With that in mind, we had fun making her Mother's Day gift this year: handmade cloth napkins "stamped" with real flowers.

I sewed the napkins first - 10" squares with the edges narrowly hemmed. Nothing fancy, but my standard napkin "recipe".

Then the fun began.

Using Tulip Soft fabric paint thinned with a couple of drops of water, we brushed the paint onto real flowers and leaves cut from a bouquet from the grocery store, and a few cut from our own plants that are blooming.

And then we "stamped" the flower image on the napkins.



The girls had tremendous fun picking out which flower they would do next, and getting paint all over their fingers.
Please pardon the rags in her hair. It was picture
day at the dance studio.

And the result was very pretty, I thought.
There were a dozen napkins total, though I think the girls would have happily painted them all day if they could have.
And Grandma seemed very happy with the results, which is really all that mattered.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, what a GREAT project!!! Turning green here... and so is every mother-in-law out there, including mine LOL!

Wendy said...

They came out so pretty! I remember many many years ago, Martha did a craft with napkins and ferns. She put the ferns between a napkin and lightly hammered it causing the chlorophyll to dye the napkin. It was very very pretty. I wonder if that would be a project worth trying?