New Serviettes For My Tea Set

I have owned a nice tea set for several years now.  Purchased in London, it has graced my table many times for tea parties with friends.

But I have never had napkins (or serviettes, as the English would say) to go with them.  I was having a couple friends over for tea this week, and decided to finally do something about this problem.  So I took a tea cup into the quilt shop with me to look for some suitable fabric.  I found the light, pretty floral that you see in the photos below. 

What follows is a little tutorial about how I made the serviettes.  I decided to make these smaller than standard napkin size, so I cut 13" unfinished squares.

First step:  fold under and iron a half-inch hem on each side. Then unfold the corners, and fold under a mitered corner.  That bit of fabric folded on the diagonal is going to stick out beyond the hem I sew, so it needs to be trimmed off.  I cut a little square our of each corner.  Can you see it clearly in the photo below? 

Mitered corner with protruding square cut out.

Then I have a nice-looking corner like this.

Folded and pressed mitered corner, ready to turn and sew.

 Folding under again, right up to the pressed fold, will give me a nice 1/4" hem.

Hem edge turned under for a finished edge.

I didn't need pins to sew the sides.  I just finger-pressed my 1/4" hems and stitched along the inside edge.

Sewing the hem, right along the inside edge.

The one place I did pin was at the corners, as there were a lot of edges to be held down there.  I simply sewed up to the diagonal fold, took one stitch on the diagonal to move me over to the next hem, and continued on that side.

Coming up to the mitered corner, which I have pinned.

And I end up with a nice-looking mitered corner like this one.  You can see that this isn't my absolute best example, but even it's not bad.

Finished mitered corner.

Here is one stack of serviettes, nicely pressed.

And don't you think they go well with my tea set?!?