Cloth Napkins with Mitered Corners - Tutorial

I wanted some cute cloth napkins for Easter brunch this year and had this fun fabric (Pop Garden by Free Spirit) that I hadn't sewn anything with yet so, I decided to learn how to make my own! I wanted to learn how to sew mitered corners on these cloth napkins and came across several tutorials online but they were all hard to understand. I hope my tutorial clears things up for you!

I cut my fabric 20" x 20" which gave me a 17" square napkin in the end. If you want a different sized napkin take your final size you would like and add 3" to the length and width. This will account for your hems on each side. 

Supplies (for 4 - 17" napkins):
1 yard fabric
cutting mat
rotary cutter
ruler
disappearing ink marking pen or pencil
matching thread
iron
sewing machine

Step 1:
Fold one side over 1/4" and press. Repeat for the other 3 sides.

Step 2:
Fold one side over 1" and press. The side should already be folded over 1/4" so once you've folded it again it will leave you with a nice clean edge. Repeat for each side.

Step 3:
With the napkin laying square in front of you, unfold the top side and mark on the 1/4" fold where the 1" right side hem folds over. Use a disappearing pencil or pen to make a small mark. Repeat this mark, this time unfolding the right side to just the 1/4" hem and folding down the 1" hem. Does that make sense? Hopefully the pictures above help clear it up!

Step 4:
Open up both 1" folds leaving just the 1/4" folds. Using a straight edge, connect those 2 marks you made in step 3.

Another way to look at it is to draw a 45 degree line across the corner of the napkin. Your straight edge should hit right at the intersection of your 1" creases in your fabric. You can see in the two pictures above where my creases in the fabric are from pressing the 1" fold.

Step 5:
Fold the fabric right sides together, matching up the marks you made on the edges of the fabric.

Step 6:
Sew across the line.

Step 7:
Clip off the corner of fabric, leaving 1/4" of fabric.

Step 8:
Repeat for all corners of the napkin.

Step 9:
Turn the cloth napkin right side out and using your pencil (or a chopstick works great!) poke the corners out until they are square. I like to iron the napkin again at this step to make sure the corners are laying nice and flat. 

Step 10:
Stitch around all 4 sides of the napkin, about 1/8" away from the inside edge of the hem. There you go! You just made a cloth napkin with mitered corners. That wasn't too hard, was it?!

Step 11:
Repeat steps 1-10 for the other 3 napkins. 

I love how these cloth napkins turned out! I'm going to use them for Easter brunch this year. They are so bright and cute I'll probably find excuses to pull them out throughout spring and summer!