Musings of Sewing, Cooking and Gardening: Silverware Holder

With so many holidays coming up soon, I thought it was time to better organize my silver flatware. I've kept them in the plastic bags they came stuffed in a shopping bag. So, I started out with a couple of yards of linen. and a couple of yards of silver cloth. I could only find silver cloth in dark brown at my local fabric shop, so that's what I used.If you can't find silver cloth, you can use felt.

Here's the supplies list for each place setting:

·   20 x 10½ inch piece of linen for
·   20 x 10 ½ piece of silver cloth
·   2 1 yard pieces of ¼ inch silk ribbon
·   Embroidery design (Flower from Dainty Borders was used twice)
·   Stabilizer
·   Wash-away fabric marker
·   Size 80 universal needle

The first thing I did was cut my 8 rectangles 20 by 10 1/2 inches. I came up with this size by measuring my knife, the longest piece and figured out how much extra fabric I needed to fold up for the pockets and down for the flap. I then set my 5 piece place setting next to each other, leaving space between and measured that. I added an extra inch so I could have 1/2 inch seams. My measurements should work for any silverware.

To keep the linen cuts straight, I pulled a thread in each direction and cut on the line. I set the linen on the silver cloth and used the linen as a pattern guide for cutting it.

1.    Lay the linen so the short side is top and bottom and the long sides are left and right.Measure up 2 ½ inches fro the short side of the linen and 5 inches from the left side (with the short side at the bottom) and make a mark. This is the center of your embroidery.

2.    Embroider the design in this spot. The embroidery is optional, but I tend to embroider everything I can.

3.    With right sides together, sew the linen and silver cloth all the way around all 4 sides leaving a 3-4 inch hole on one side to turn.

4.    Turn the piece right side out and press. Press one short end up 5 inches.

5.    Top stitch around all 4 sides - you’ll be sewing the fold you made above.

6.    Mark 4 lines on the 5 inch piece and sew a straight line to create 5 little silverware pockets.

7.    Fold the top short end over the lower one and top stitch the fold. I used pins instead of a marker because I didn't want to wash the silver cloth. You could use a air erase marker.