Unit 2: Napkins and Simple Hems

Choosing Cloth and Cutting a True Square

A napkin is nothing but a square of cloth with four hemmed edges, which is exactly why it is such a good teacher. Every mistake shows. If the square is not square, the hems will not meet honestly at the corners, and no amount of clever stitching will hide it. So the work begins long before the machine is threaded.

What cloth actually works

Table linens want a stable, tightly woven fabric made of cotton or linen. Both fibers take a hard crease and hold it, both absorb water instead of pushing it around, and both survive hot washing. Lightweight cotton twill is a particularly kind choice for a first set: it has enough body to hold a crisp corner but is still thin enough to fold and sew without fighting you. Ordinary quilting cotton works well too and comes in every color you could want.

What does not work is anything with stretch and anything loosely woven. A knit will not hold a folded corner square; it will pull itself into a soft, rounded blob the first time it goes through the wash. A loose, open weave frays as you handle it and shifts under the presser foot, so the fold you pressed at three-eighths of an inch arrives at the needle measuring a quarter. Hold a candidate fabric up and tug it gently on the diagonal. If it gives noticeably, save it for something else.

Wash and dry the fabric before you cut, on the same setting you intend to use for the finished napkins, and press it while it is still slightly damp. Cotton shrinks. A napkin that shrinks after it is hemmed pulls its own hem into little waves.

Sizes, and the allowance nobody remembers

Three sizes cover almost everything. Cocktail napkins finish at 10 by 10 inches, lunch napkins at 13 by 13, and full dinner napkins at 17 by 17. Those are finished measurements, the size of the napkin after it is hemmed, and this is where most beginners lose their first set of fabric. If you cut a 17-inch square and then hem it, you will end up with something noticeably smaller than a dinner napkin.

Add the hem allowance to every edge before you cut. For a double-fold hem folded three-eighths of an inch to the wrong side and three-eighths again, you are consuming three-quarters of an inch on each of the four edges, so a 17-inch finished napkin is cut at 18.5 by 18.5. For mitered corners, which need a wider fold to behave, plan on a full inch on each edge and cut at 19 by 19. Write the cutting size on a scrap of paper and tape it to your table. You will be glad of it at the fifth napkin.

How much fabric to buy

Do this arithmetic yourself rather than trusting a number someone else printed. Quilting cotton is usually 44 to 45 inches wide; home decorator weight is often 54 inches. On a 45-inch width you can lay two 19-inch squares side by side across the fabric, which uses 38 inches and leaves the selvage edges to trim away. Each row of two therefore costs you 19 inches of length. Four napkins take two rows, or 38 inches, which is a little over a yard. A dozen napkins take six rows, 114 inches, or roughly three and a quarter yards. Buy a few extra inches for straightening.

Getting the square truly square

The cut edge you bring home from the store is almost never on grain. To straighten it, snip through the selvage about an inch in, catch a single crosswise thread with a pin, and pull it gently while sliding the fabric along. The thread will draw up a puckered line all the way across; cut along that line and you have a genuine crosswise grain edge. On many plain cottons you can simply tear across instead, which follows the grain exactly.

Spread the whole piece flat on a large clean surface, smoothed but never stretched, and let it settle before you measure. Fold selvage to selvage and check that the crosswise cut lies square to the fold; if it does not, tug the fabric on the opposite diagonal until it does. Then measure and cut your squares with a rotary cutter against an acrylic ruler, keeping the blade guard closed the instant you set the cutter down. A rotary blade will open a finger as easily as it opens cotton.

There is something fitting in beginning with cloth spread out flat and true. The psalmist pictures the Lord stretching out the heavens like a curtain, and every good piece of sewing begins the same way: the material laid open, smoothed, and measured honestly before a single cut is made.

Needle, Thread, and Stitch Length for a Fine Hem

Half the trouble people blame on their sewing machine is really a mismatch between three small things: the needle, the thread, and the stitch length. Get those three agreeing with each other and with your fabric, and a napkin hem sews itself. Get them fighting and you will chase skipped stitches for an hour and never find the cause.

Reading a needle package

Machine needles carry a two-part size, such as 80/12. The first number is the metric size, the second the American equivalent, and both climb together as the needle gets thicker. For table linens you live in a narrow band. A 70/10 is right for fine 60-weight thread and lightweight cottons. An 80/12 is the everyday choice for quilting cotton sewn with ordinary 50-weight thread. An 80/12 to 90/14 suits linen and heavier home-decorator cloth.

Point shape matters as much as size. A sharp needle has a genuine point that pierces cleanly between the threads of a woven fabric, which is what you want for cotton and linen. A universal needle has a slightly rounded point and is a reasonable compromise that handles wovens and knits both. A ballpoint needle has a distinctly rounded tip meant to shove knit loops aside rather than cut them; using one on woven cotton gives you a poor, slightly ragged stitch. Save it for jersey.

Start every project with a fresh needle. They dull invisibly, and a dull needle announces itself as a faint popping sound and a row of skipped stitches. When you change one, switch the machine off at the wall first. It costs three seconds and removes the only way that particular accident can happen.

Matching thread to needle

Thread weight runs backward from what you might expect: the higher the number, the finer the thread. Thirty-weight is thick and shows; 50-weight is the common all-purpose size; 60-weight is fine and nearly disappears into a hem. For table linens, 40- to 60-weight covers everything.

The pairing rule is simple. The thread must fill the needle's eye reasonably well. Fine 50- or 60-weight thread rattling around in the large eye of a 90/14 needle will not be caught reliably by the hook, and you get skipped stitches that look like the machine is possessed. Pair fine thread with a 70/10 or 80/12 and the problem vanishes.

Polyester thread is strong, resists abrasion, and barely shrinks, which makes it a sound choice for napkins that will be washed hot a hundred times. Cotton 50-weight is lovely for fine hemming work on cotton and linen and presses beautifully flat. Either serves. What does not serve is the ancient spool from the bottom of the box that snaps when you tug it; old thread goes brittle, and a hem sewn with it will fail at the wash.

Stitch length and tension

Hems on table linens want a short stitch, somewhere in the range of 2.0 to 2.5 millimeters. Short stitches hold a folded edge down firmly and keep the fold from creeping. Very narrow rolled hems may take a slightly longer setting, up to about 3.0 millimeters, depending on the foot and the cloth. Sources disagree on the exact number for a given fabric weight, and honestly they should: machines differ, feed dogs differ, and the only reliable answer is a test seam on a doubled scrap of the very fabric you are about to hem. Sew four inches, look at both sides, and adjust.

Balanced tension looks identical from the top and the bottom. If you see loops lying on the underside of the fabric, the top thread is not being pulled up properly, which usually means the machine was threaded with the presser foot down and the thread never seated in the tension discs. Rethread with the foot raised before you touch the tension dial. If the seam puckers and the fabric draws up along the stitching, the tension is too tight or the stitch is too long for the cloth. Loosen a little, shorten a little, and test again.

Everything in its place

Paul tells the church to put on the full armor of God, piece by piece, none of it skipped, because a single gap is where the trouble comes in. A sewing machine works the same way. Right needle, right thread, right length, correct threading, fresh bobbin: none of them is impressive alone, and any one of them missing will ruin the hem. Set them all before you sit down, and the sewing is the easy part.

Pressing a Double Fold That Stays Put

Beginners think of the iron as cleanup, something you do to a finished item so it looks tidy. Experienced sewers know it is a construction tool, and on a napkin it is the most important one you own. The needle cannot make a sharp corner. The needle only follows the fold that the iron already made. If the fold is crisp, square, and even, the stitching is nearly automatic; if it is soft and wandering, no amount of care at the machine will rescue it.

Pressing is not ironing

Ironing is what you do to a shirt: the iron slides, and the sliding is the point. Pressing is different. You set the iron down on one area, hold it, lift it straight up, and move to the next area. You never drag it along a folded edge. Dragging pushes the cloth ahead of the sole plate and stretches the fold out of shape, which is exactly how a straight edge turns into a gentle ripple. Set, hold, lift, move.

Work with the wrong side of the fabric facing up, so the folds you are making are in front of you and any shine from the iron lands where it will not be seen. Cotton and linen both like heat and steam; both also scorch. If you are pressing linen at a high setting, or any fabric from the right side, use a press cloth. A square of muslin costs nothing and prevents the faint glazed shine that never comes out.

Building the fold

Set your first fold three-eighths of an inch to the wrong side along one edge. Guessing produces a hem that is generous at one end and skimpy at the other, so measure. A metal hem gauge with a sliding marker is the traditional tool and is worth its small cost. A serviceable substitute is a strip of stiff card cut exactly three-eighths of an inch wide; lay it against the raw edge, fold the fabric over it, press, and slide the card along.

Fold the same edge over a second time by the same three-eighths of an inch, so the raw edge is now completely buried inside the fold, and press again. Nothing raw shows, inside or out. Do all four edges the same way before you stitch anything. On a napkin destined for mitered corners you will unfold these creases again in a moment, and it does not matter; the crease lines are the map you will navigate by, so press them hard enough to leave a visible line.

Give each pressed section a few seconds to cool before you move it. A fold is set by heat softening the fibers and then cooling in the new position, so lifting a hot fold and dropping it in a heap undoes half your work. If you own a tailor's clapper, or even a smooth block of hardwood, laying it on the pressed fold for a moment pulls the heat out and locks the crease. And keep in mind that the iron's sole plate, the pressed cloth, and the metal parts of your machine all stay hot longer than you expect. This is worth saying plainly in a house with children: a cooling iron looks exactly like a cold iron.

What a good fold looks like, and what to do when it is not

A correct double fold, seen from the wrong side, is a band of even width running the full length of the edge, with a firm outer crease and a firm inner crease, and no raw fiber peeking out anywhere. Lay a ruler along it. The width should not vary by more than a hair from end to end.

If the fold widens and narrows, you folded by eye. Open it, mist it with water, press it flat again, and redo it with a gauge. If the pressed edge ripples instead of lying straight, you dragged the iron or you pressed along an edge that was cut off grain; steam it flat and check the cut edge against the grain before rebuilding the fold. If the crease will not hold at all, the fabric is probably a polyester blend rather than the cotton or linen you assumed, and it will need more steam and a longer cooling pause. If the fold looks right but the second fold is thicker than the first, you let the first fold shift while turning the second; press each fold separately and completely before starting the next.

The part nobody sees

The psalm says of the king's daughter that she is all glorious within, and only then speaks of the clothing. It is a fair picture of hem work. The pressing is inside work. Nobody at your table will ever examine the crease you built before the stitching went in, but they will see the straight, calm edge that crease made possible. Good work is usually like that: the visible part rests on something patient that was done first and never shown.

Stitching the Double-Fold Hem Straight and Even

With four edges pressed into even double folds, the machine work is short. What separates a homemade-looking napkin from a good one now is a single quality: a line of stitching that runs at a constant distance from the folded edge for the entire length of the hem. Not a straight line in the abstract, but a line parallel to the fold. A wobble of a sixteenth of an inch is visible from across a room, because the eye reads it against the fold beside it.

Where the stitching goes

Work from the wrong side, with the folded hem facing up where you can see it. Place the needle so the stitch falls about an eighth of an inch to the outside of the inner fold, within the hem band — roughly a quarter inch in from the finished edge. That is the edge the stitching must catch. If the stitching drifts inward, past the inner fold, it comes off the hem entirely and the fold flaps loose on the underside, leaving a line of stitching floating in the middle of nowhere on the right side. If it drifts outward, toward the finished edge, it stops catching the inner fold and can run off the hem's outer edge altogether.

Some sewers prefer to work from the right side and topstitch a quarter inch in from the outer edge, which produces a decorative line and, if the fold is even, catches the hem underneath. Either is correct. The wrong-side method is more forgiving for a beginner because you can watch the inner fold the whole way.

Set the stitch length in the 2.0 to 2.5 millimeter range and sew a test on a doubled scrap first. Short stitches hold the fold and keep it from creeping.

Guiding the fabric

Do not steer with your hands the way you would steer a car. Choose a fixed reference on the machine and hold the fabric so the fold runs against it. The right edge of most presser feet, the notches on the throat plate, or a strip of painter's tape laid on the bed at the exact distance all work. Then your job becomes simple: keep the fold touching the mark and let the feed dogs pull.

Let the machine do the feeding. Pulling the fabric from behind stretches the hem and makes it wave; holding it back makes the stitches pile up short. Your hands guide, they do not tow. Rest the left hand flat on the fabric ahead of the foot and the right hand lightly behind it, and keep both well away from the needle. A hem is a small piece of work and it is easy to let a finger drift under the foot while your attention is on the fold.

Secure the beginning and the end. Two or three backstitches at each end will do, or use the lock-stitch function if your machine has one. A hem that is never secured will start unraveling at the first wash.

Four sides, one at a time

For a simple hem you can sew each of the four edges as a separate pass, backstitching at both ends of each. This is the easiest way to keep every line parallel to its own fold, and the four short seams are hidden well enough at the corners. The alternative is to sew continuously around all four sides, pivoting at each corner, which is faster and looks tidier but demands that you handle the corner bulk well. That is worth its own treatment, and it comes next.

When it goes wrong

The stitching runs off the hem in places. Your fold varies in width. Unpick that stretch, re-press the fold with a gauge, and sew again. Stitching cannot be more even than the fold under it.

The hem waves along its length. Either you pulled the fabric through, or the edge was cut off grain. Press it flat with steam and check.

The seam puckers and the fabric draws up. The stitch is too long for a light cotton, the top tension is too tight, or both. Shorten to 2.0 millimeters, ease the tension slightly, and test on a scrap.

Stitches skip. Nearly always a dull, bent, or wrong-size needle. Change it before you change anything else.

The line wanders even though the fold is even. You are watching the needle instead of the guide. Watch the fold where it meets your reference mark, an inch or two ahead of the needle, and the line will straighten out on its own.

The border that mattered

It is a small thing, worth noticing, that when Matthew tells of the woman who came up behind the Lord in the crowd, he does not say she touched his cloak generally. He says she touched the hem of his garment. The edge, the finished border, the part a maker labors over last and a stranger reaches for first. Hems are humble work and they are not unimportant work. Scripture keeps its eye on them.

Overlapped Corners: The Fast Four-Sided Napkin

There are two honest ways to finish the corner of a hemmed square. One is the mitered corner, a diagonal seam that removes bulk entirely and looks like something from a linen shop. The other is the overlapped corner, where the hems simply cross one another. It is faster, it uses less fabric, and on a lightweight cotton it looks perfectly respectable. For a stack of everyday napkins that will be used hard and washed weekly, it is the sensible choice, and it teaches you to handle bulk under the presser foot, which you will need for everything you sew afterward.

What is actually happening at the corner

Press a three-eighths-inch double fold on all four edges of your square. Now look at any corner. The hem running along the top edge and the hem running along the side edge occupy the same little region of cloth, and they are stacked on top of one another. Count the layers: two folds from one hem, two from the other, plus the body of the napkin. That is a small pad of five or more layers in a space about three-eighths of an inch across.

That pad is the whole difficulty. It lifts the presser foot at the front, which tips the foot backward, which lets the feed dogs lose their grip. The result is a cluster of tiny stitches, or a skipped stitch, or the foot sliding sideways and taking your straight line with it.

Reducing the bulk before you sew

Two small trims solve most of it. Before you make the second fold, unfold the corner and cut off the square corner tip on a diagonal, taking away about a quarter inch. When you refold, the tip that used to stack up is simply gone. Second, at each corner, trim away the little tongue of the inner fold that extends past the crossing point. Neither cut goes anywhere near the finished edge, so nothing frays into view.

Press the corner hard after trimming. A well-pressed corner is half as thick as an unpressed one, and thickness is the enemy here.

Sewing around all four sides

Begin in the middle of one edge rather than at a corner. Backstitch, then sew toward the first corner, keeping the inner fold against your guide.

Stop when the needle reaches the point where your stitching line meets the far hem, which on a three-eighths-inch double fold is roughly a quarter inch from the far edge. Stop with the needle down in the fabric. Lift the presser foot, pivot the napkin ninety degrees, lower the foot, and carry on down the next edge. The needle acts as the hinge; if you lift it before pivoting, the corner opens into a small gap.

Approach the thick corner slowly. Many machines have a hand wheel for exactly this, and turning it by hand for the three or four stitches that cross the pad gives you complete control and takes the strain off the needle. If your foot still tips, slide a folded scrap of the same fabric under the back of the foot to level it before you start, and remove it once you are past. Do not push or pull the napkin to help it along; that bends the needle sideways and is the usual way needles break. Wear the habit of keeping your fingers a full inch clear of the foot when you slow down, because slow work is exactly when hands creep in.

Sew all four sides, pivot at each corner, and finish by overlapping your starting stitches by a half inch. Backstitch and cut the threads.

When the corner comes out badly

The corner is a rounded lump rather than a point. You did not trim the tip. Unpick an inch either side, trim, re-press, and restitch.

The stitching wanders off the hem right at the corner. The foot tipped as it climbed the pad. Level it with a folded scrap next time, and go over the pad on the hand wheel.

The pivot left a small notch or gap. You lifted the needle out before pivoting, or you pivoted too early. The needle stays down, and the stopping point is where your stitching line crosses the far hem, not the edge of the fabric.

A stitch or two skipped at the corner only. The needle could not push through five layers. A fresh 80/12 fixes it; slowing down helps as much.

Corners are small and they are where everything shows. So is much of ordinary life. The crowds in Matthew reached for nothing more than the hem, the very border of the garment, and were made whole. The edge of a thing is rarely the least of it.

The Mitered Corner, Fold by Fold

A mitered corner replaces the stacked pad of an overlapped corner with a single diagonal seam running at forty-five degrees out to the point. The two hems meet each other on that diagonal instead of climbing over each other. The corner lies flat, weighs the same as the rest of the hem, and looks identical from the front and the back. It is the finish on good linen, and there is nothing mysterious about it once you see what the creases are telling you.

Cut and press first

Miters need room. A quarter-inch allowance cannot be folded, pressed, and stitched without the fold shredding at the diagonal; plan on a full inch of allowance on every edge, folded as a half inch and a half inch. That is deliberately wider than the three-eighths-inch double fold used for a plain hem: the diagonal seam needs cloth to take a bite out of, and the extra width is what keeps the point from tearing out. For a 17-inch finished dinner napkin, that means cutting a 19-inch square, not the 18.5-inch square a plain hem asks for.

Press the first half-inch fold to the wrong side on all four edges. Press the second half inch on all four edges. Then unfold everything completely and lay the square flat, wrong side up.

Look at what you have. There are two crease lines running parallel to each edge, one at a half inch and one at an inch. Near each corner, the inner creases from two adjoining edges cross each other at a point one inch in from both raw edges. That crossing point is the entire secret of the miter. Mark it with a pencil dot or a chalk mark on all four corners.

Building the corner

Take one corner. Fold the square diagonally through that corner, right sides together, bringing the two adjoining edges exactly on top of each other. The crease lines from one edge will lie precisely on the crease lines from the other. Pin the layers so they cannot shift.

Now stitch a straight line starting exactly at your marked crossing point and running perpendicular to the diagonal fold, out to the folded edge. It is a short seam, well under an inch. Backstitch at the crossing point; that end takes the strain.

Trim the seam allowance to about a quarter inch, and cut the corner tip off close to the stitching, taking care not to nick the stitches themselves. This trim is not optional. Left in place, the tip stacks up under the diagonal and gives you a blunt, lumpy corner instead of a point.

Press the little seam open with the tip of the iron. Then turn the corner right side out, easing the point out gently from the inside with a chopstick or a blunt point turner. Never use scissors or a seam ripper to poke a corner; the point will push straight through the weave and you cannot mend it.

Refold the hem along the creases you pressed at the beginning and press the whole corner flat. The hem falls into place on both edges and the diagonal shows as a clean forty-five degree line running to the point. Repeat on the remaining three corners, then stitch the hem down all the way around, close to the inner fold, exactly as with any double-fold hem.

Checking your work

Turn the napkin over. From the right side the corner should show a crisp point with the two hems meeting at a mitered line. Set a ruler against the two edges leaving the corner; they should be square to one another. Lay the napkin flat and press down on the corner with one finger: it should stay flat, not spring up. A corner that springs is a corner that still has bulk in it.

If the point is blunt, the seam started inside the crossing point, or the tip was not trimmed close enough. If the point puckers and drags, the seam started beyond the crossing point, out toward the raw edge, pulling the corner tight. If the hem widths do not match after refolding, the two edges were not pressed to the same width, and the diagonal will read as slightly crooked. All three are fixed by unpicking the short seam, re-pressing, remarking the crossing point, and going again. Each miter is a separate small project, so a mistake costs you one corner, not one napkin.

Fitly joined

Paul describes a body fitly joined together, each joint supplying what the next one needs, each part working in its own measure. A miter is a joint in exactly that sense. Two hems that have nothing to do with each other along their lengths must meet at one point, at one angle, and carry each other's edge. It only works when both were prepared with the same care, in the same measure. Sloppiness on one edge shows up at the corner, where the two are asked to agree.

Rescuing a Wonky Miter

Nobody's first miter is good, and most people's third one still is not. That is normal and it is fixable, because a miter fails in a small number of specific ways and each of them leaves a signature you can read. Learning to diagnose from the finished corner is worth more than a dozen more attempts made blindly.

Before anything else: practice on scraps. Cut a handful of four-inch squares from the same fabric and miter their corners. The folds behave identically, the diagnosis is identical, and a ruined four-inch square costs nothing. Working out your problems on scraps rather than on your good yardage is not timidity; it is how professionals work.

Reading the failure

The point is blunt and slightly rounded. Either the diagonal seam began short of the crossing point, so there is too much fabric left in the tip, or the tip was not trimmed close enough after stitching. Both leave excess bulk that cannot fold into a point. Unpick, remark the crossing point, restitch, trim closer.

The point is sharp but the corner puckers and pulls the edges in. The seam began beyond the crossing point, out toward the raw edge. The corner has been made too small for the hems arriving at it, so it draws them up. Unpick and start the seam a hair closer to the center.

The diagonal is not at forty-five degrees. The two hems arriving at that corner were not pressed to the same width. If one edge folded at a half inch and the other at three-eighths of an inch, the miter has to split the difference and comes out crooked. Check both hems with a gauge before you blame the seam.

The corner will not lie flat and springs up. Bulk. Trim the seam allowance closer to a quarter inch, cut the tip away, and press the small seam open rather than to one side.

The napkin is no longer square; one corner is obtuse and the opposite one acute. This is not a miter problem at all. The square was cut off grain, or the fabric was stretched while pressing. Steam the whole piece flat, tug gently on the long diagonal to bring it back to true, let it dry flat, and check the edges against a crosswise thread before you rebuild anything.

The hem width changes as it leaves the corner. The fold shifted while you were refolding after turning. Press the corner region completely flat, then rebuild the fold outward from the corner rather than folding the length first and hoping the corner cooperates.

Trouble at the machine, not in the folds

The presser foot twists as it reaches the corner and the seam veers. The foot is climbing a step. Level it with a folded scrap of the same fabric under the back of the foot before you start, or turn the last few stitches on the hand wheel.

Stitches skip only at the corner. The needle is struggling through the layers. A fresh 80/12 sharp is usually enough on cotton; move to a 90/14 for linen or decorator weight. Do not force the fabric through to help, because that flexes the needle against the plate and breaks it.

The stitching is fine on three corners and poor on the fourth. You were tired, or that corner was the one you did not press after trimming. Miters reward doing all four steps at each corner rather than doing one step around all four.

Unpicking without ruining the cloth

Slide the seam ripper under a single stitch, cut it, skip three or four, cut again, then pull the seam apart from the other side and lift the loose thread away. Trying to plow the ripper along inside the seam is how you slice the napkin. Once the seam is out, mist the area with water and press it flat; old crease lines that disagree with your new ones will confuse the fold every time. Fresh, damp pressing wipes the slate.

Working in the press

Mark writes that the woman came in the press behind him. The press was the crowd, the crush of people, and she reached through it for the border of his garment. Anyone who has spent an evening picking out a stitching line understands something about persisting through a crush. The work of a miter is mostly patience: press, look, unpick, press again. It is not glamorous and it is not wasted. Keep at the corner until it is right, and every napkin after it will be easier.

Narrow and Rolled Hems for Fine Linen

On a thin, fine cloth, even the three-eighths-inch double-fold hem is too much. It reads as a heavy band around a delicate square and it stiffens the drape. The answer is a rolled hem, an extremely narrow finish that encases the raw edge twice in a fold roughly an eighth of an inch wide, sometimes up to a quarter. Done well, it looks like a fine cord running around the edge, and it is the standard finish on handkerchiefs and good linen napkins.

Setting up

Because the hem consumes so little fabric, cut the napkin only a half inch larger than its finished size. A 13-inch lunch napkin is cut at 13.5 inches square.

Use a sharp needle, sizes 60/8 or 70/10, which pierces fine woven cloth cleanly instead of dragging it down into the needle plate. Fine thread suits fine hems, so 50- or 60-weight is the right neighborhood. Set the stitch length between 2.0 and 3.0 millimeters, with the shorter end for very light or slippery cloth and the longer end for a medium-weight cotton. As always, test on a scrap of the actual fabric.

Using a rolled-hem foot

A rolled-hem foot has a curled metal scroll on its underside that catches the raw edge and turns it under twice as the fabric feeds past. They are commonly sold in a 2 millimeter width for delicate fabrics and a 4 millimeter width for slightly heavier ones.

Starting is the hardest part, and beginners give up here. Trim the first inch of the edge you are about to hem at a shallow angle so there is less to feed in. Fold that first inch by hand into the same doubled roll the foot will make, slip it into the scroll, and pull it gently through until it sits under the needle. Lower the foot, take three or four stitches, then hold the thread tails behind the machine and pull them lightly while the machine takes over. From then on your only job is to feed the raw edge into the mouth of the scroll at a steady, even rate, holding the fabric slightly to the left so it stays curled. Feed too little and the roll opens out; feed too much and the roll doubles on itself and jams.

The corner problem

A rolled-hem foot cannot turn a corner. The scroll is designed to fold a continuous straight edge, and a corner arriving at it will bunch, jam, or skip stitches. The workable method is to prepare each corner by hand before you sew: fold the corner under at ninety degrees, matching the width of the rolled hem, and secure it with a dab of washable glue stick so it stays put while it feeds. Let the glue dry before sewing. Then hem one edge at a time, stopping at each corner rather than pivoting.

A rolled hem without the foot

You can produce a narrow hem on any straight-stitch machine with no special foot at all. Sew a line of ordinary straight stitching a quarter inch from the raw edge. Fold the raw edge to the wrong side along that stitching line and press; the stitching gives you a crisp, exact fold line that no gauge can match. Trim the raw edge down close to the fold, fold once more so the trimmed edge is enclosed, press, and stitch close to the inner fold. It takes longer than the foot but produces an equally narrow, even hem, and it turns corners without complaint.

By hand, the same result comes from folding an eighth of an inch twice, pressing, and working small slip stitches inside the fold, catching only a thread or two of the napkin body at a time so nothing shows on the right side. It is slow, restful work and it makes the finest edge of all.

When it goes wrong

The roll keeps opening out flat. You are not feeding enough fabric into the scroll. Guide the edge slightly further right into the mouth.

The hem is doubled and lumpy in places. Too much fabric fed in. Ease off and keep the tension of your guiding hand constant.

The fabric is pulled down into the needle plate at the start. The needle is too large or too blunt for a fine cloth, or you started at the very edge. Change to a 60/8 or 70/10 sharp and begin an inch in from the corner if you can.

The stitching misses the roll entirely. The roll drifted left out from under the needle. Watch the roll rather than the needle and correct continuously.

Psalm 45 speaks of raiment of needlework brought before a king. A rolled hem is needlework in that exact sense: fine, deliberate, and made for something better than hard use. There is no shame in wanting the edge of a plain linen napkin to be beautiful. Beauty in ordinary household things is a gift you give to everyone who sits at the table.

Binding an Edge with Bias Tape

Not every edge has to be folded back on itself. A bound edge wraps the raw edge in a separate strip of fabric, which adds a line of color, adds durability where an edge takes abuse, and handles curves that a folded hem cannot. On table linens it is quick, it is handsome, and it turns a plain white napkin into something worth setting out.

What bias means and why it matters

Woven fabric has two grains: lengthwise, running parallel to the selvage, and crosswise, running from selvage to selvage. Cut along either one and the strip is stable and will not stretch. Cut at forty-five degrees to both, on the true bias, and the strip becomes flexible: it stretches along its length and it curves smoothly without wrinkling. That is the whole reason binding is cut on the bias. A straight-grain strip forced around a curve will pucker on the inside and gape on the outside, every time.

Bias tape sold in packages comes pre-folded. Double-fold tape has been folded in from both raw edges and then folded again down the middle, with one half slightly wider than the other. That difference in width is deliberate and you will use it.

One caution about shrinkage. Your napkin fabric should be washed and dried before cutting. Whether packaged bias tape has been preshrunk is not something I have found a dependable general answer on, and if the tape shrinks after the napkin does not, the bound edge will pull up into small waves. The safe course costs nothing: wet a length of tape, dry it as you would the finished napkin, press it, and use it. Then you know.

Applying double-fold tape by machine

Open out the tape's outer fold on the wider half. Lay that wider half against the wrong side of the napkin, raw edges together, and stitch along the fold line nearest the edge, roughly a quarter inch in. This first pass is invisible in the end, so relax about it.

Now wrap the tape over the raw edge to the right side. The narrower half comes to rest on the front, and because it is narrower, it covers your first line of stitching but sits just inside the folded edge of the wider half underneath. Press it in place. Then topstitch from the right side, close to the tape's inner fold, a scant eighth of an inch in. Because the underside is wider, that stitching line catches it reliably. This is why the wider half goes on the back: it removes the guesswork of trying to catch a hidden edge blind.

Use a stitch length around 2.0 to 2.5 millimeters, an 80/12 needle for cotton, and thread that either matches the tape exactly or contrasts deliberately. There is no middle ground; a near-match reads as a mistake.

Corners

At a square corner, stitch the first pass to within a quarter inch of the corner and backstitch. Fold the tape straight up so it makes a forty-five degree diagonal at the corner, then fold it back down along the next edge, aligning its raw edge with the new edge. That double fold creates a small pleat that becomes a mitered corner in the binding when you wrap it to the front. Press it, then continue stitching from the corner down the next edge.

To join the two ends, leave a couple of inches unstitched, trim the ends so they overlap by about a half inch, fold the top end under a quarter inch so no raw edge shows, tuck the other inside it, and stitch through.

Curves and cautions

For a curved edge, use tape a half inch wide or narrower; wider tape simply will not lie down around a curve. Before pinning, steam-press the tape into roughly the same curve as the edge it will bind, stretching the inner edge slightly and easing the outer. Tape that has been shaped first goes on flat; tape fought around a curve puckers.

Two practical warnings. Freshly cut bias strips have raw, keen edges and will give you a paper cut if you run a finger along one; handle them by the flat. And when you press a length of tape, remember the tape is thin and heats through fast, so your fingers meet full iron temperature almost immediately. Use the tip of a seam gauge or a wooden point turner to hold the tape while the iron passes.

A border of blue

Israel was told to make fringes in the borders of their garments and put on the fringe a ribband of blue. The border of a garment was to carry a mark, a line of color, something a person would see and remember what it stood for. A bound edge is a small echo of that idea: the edge is where the eye goes, and there is nothing frivolous about making it beautiful. Plain things well finished have been a mark of God's people for a very long time.

Scaling Up: A Table Runner Built From the Same Four Hems

Everything you have practiced on a napkin applies without change to a table runner. The difference is length. A napkin is small enough to control with two hands; a runner is three feet long or more, and a long edge finds every weakness in your cutting, pressing, and feeding. Handled properly it is a straightforward evening's work and the most useful thing you can make from a yard of good cloth.

Working out the size

Two measurements set the cut size.

For the width, decide the finished width you want and add an inch and a half. That covers a three-quarter-inch hem allowance on each long side. A runner finishing at 12 inches wide is cut 13.5 inches wide.

For the length, measure your table and add at least 10 inches total, so the runner overhangs about 5 inches at each end. If you are making a runner to a stated finished length instead, add the same allowance you used on the sides. A runner finishing 12 by 36 inches is cut 13.5 by 37.5 inches.

Cut it on grain. Straighten the crosswise edge by pulling a thread, then measure the length along the lengthwise grain and cut both long edges parallel to the selvage. On a piece this long, a half degree of drift becomes a visible bow by the far end.

Hemming the long edges

Press a three-quarter-inch hem allowance as two folds: three-eighths of an inch, then three-eighths again. Do not try to press the whole length in one motion. Work in sections of about 12 inches, setting and lifting the iron, then slide the fabric along and press the next section, always checking the fold width with a gauge as you go. It is tempting to run the iron down the whole edge to save time; that is precisely how you stretch a long edge into a ripple.

Pin the pressed hem every four to six inches. Pins are not needed on a napkin and are essential here, because the weight of the fabric hanging off the table will drag a long fold open before it reaches the needle.

At the machine, support the whole runner. Let the bulk sit on the table to the left of the machine, not hanging off the edge, and rest the far end on your lap or another chair. Fabric hanging in the air pulls the seam and gives you a hem that is straight in the middle and wandering at the ends. Sew close to the inner fold at 2.0 to 2.5 millimeters, guiding the fold against your reference mark, and do not pull.

Finishing the ends

Three good choices, all of which you already know.

Mitered corners. Press the same three-eighths and three-eighths on all four edges, mark the crossing points, stitch the short diagonals, trim, turn, and hem all the way around. This gives the crispest result.

Bias binding. Hem the two long edges, then bind each short end with double-fold tape, folding the tape ends under so no raw edge shows. Fast, and a contrasting binding looks deliberate.

The pillowcase method. This one needs a different cut. Instead of the 13.5 by 37.5 inches used above, cut the piece at twice the finished width plus one inch, so a runner finishing 12 by 36 inches is cut 25 by 37.5 inches — roughly twice the fabric of the hemmed versions, since the fold becomes one long edge in place of two separate ones. Fold the piece in half lengthwise with right sides together, then stitch the single long raw edge and both short ends, leaving a four-inch gap in the middle of the long seam for turning. Trim the corners on the diagonal, turn right side out through the gap, ease the corners out with a blunt point turner, press flat, and slipstitch or topstitch the gap closed. This produces a fully lined, double-thickness runner with no exposed raw edges anywhere, which is worth considering for a piece that will get hot dishes set on it.

Making it last

A runner takes more abuse than a napkin: candle wax, hot plates, elbows. Build for it. Use polyester thread or a good cotton, keep the stitch at 2.0 to 2.5 millimeters, and backstitch every start and stop. If a corner is going to be gripped and pulled, add a short second row of stitching there.

For care, wash in the same way you preshrank the fabric, and press while slightly damp; cotton and linen both take a crease best with a little moisture in them. Store folded flat or rolled around a cardboard tube rather than crushed in a drawer, and a runner will look new for years.

That is the quiet promise of well-made cloth. Moses reminded Israel that through forty years in the wilderness their raiment waxed not old upon them, and though that was a wonder of God's provision rather than a sewing technique, it points at something true about the work of our hands as well. Things made carefully, from sound material, with the stitching secured and the edges properly finished, last. A napkin hemmed this week can still be on the table when your grandchildren are eating from it. That is a reasonable ambition for an evening's sewing.