Dining Room Dress-Up: Napkins and Placemats

With embroidery, there are so many ways to make a table setting personal and beautiful, and to create different looks for all the seasons and holidays!

Choose a favorite design and embellish linen napkins and placemats to make lovely gifts, or a little something for your own dining room.

With precise positioning marks and the right stabilizing techniques, placing designs on corners is a breeze. In just a few steps, ordinary table settings become extraordinary!

Supplies & Materials:

Supplies Needed:
-Placemat and napkin
-Medium weight cutaway stabilizer
-Temporary spray adhesive
-Air-erase pen

Designs Used:

For the placemat, I used the large sizes of the Majolica Floral Corner and the Majolica Floral Thin Border . I used the small size of the Majolica Floral Corner on the napkin. When creating a new look for dining room decor, choose designs you love to personalize table settings with style and elegance. There are hundreds of border and corner designs that would look fabulous on table linens!

Special Project Notes:

You can find cloth napkins and placemats in a variety of colors and patterns at your local retail store. I found mine at Target.

Gather Materials:

Embroidering placemats

First I will embroider the placemat. To get started, I printed paper templates of the designs to perfectly place them on the placemat. If you are new to using templates for design placement, we recommend Wilcom's Hatch software which comes in different levels depending on what you'd like to use the software for. Hatch Organizer works well to view your designs, print dielines and templates, change design colors, and create basic design layouts. (This is an affiliate link. We may earn commission on purchases made with this link.)

Next I positioned the templates on the placemat the way I wanted them. I placed the corner designs in each bottom corner of the placemat, with the border design between them along the bottom edge.

I measured equal distances from the outer edges of the designs and the edges of the placemat. I also measured equal distances between the designs. With an air-erase pen, I poked a hole in the center of each template and marked the fabric. I also marked the horizontal and vertical axis points on each template.

I removed the template and drew lines connecting the marks. These lines will help hoop the placemat.

Then I sprayed a piece of cutaway stabilizer with temporary adhesive and smoothed the placemat on top. Since I'll be embroidering the designs close to the outer edge of the placemat, I allowed the stabilizer to extend a couple of inches past the placemat edge.

I extended the lines on the fabric out onto the stabilizer (as not all the placemat will reach the edges of the hoop). Then I hooped the placemat and the stabilizer together by aligning the marks on the hoop with the lines on the fabric. The placemat might not reach the edges of the hoop, and that's okay. The adhesive on the stabilizer will hold the placemat in place during the embroidering process.

Start Embroidering:

I attached the hoop to the machine and loaded my first design. I moved the hoop so the needle was directly over the center point on the fabric and embroidered the design. When the design finished, I unhooped the placemat and trimmed the excess stabilizer from the backside of the embroidery, leaving 1/4" to 1/2" of stabilizer around the edges of the design. This gives the fabric a little extra support.

I hooped the next design and embroidered it using the steps above. When hooping the placemat for the second design, the first design may be hooped along the edge, and this is fine -- the hoop won't harm the design. I trimmed the stabilizer from the backside of the second design, and repeated this process for all the designs.

Embroidering napkins

To place the design on a napkin, I printed a paper template and positioned it on the napkin where I wanted it. I placed a corner design in the lower left corner of my napkin, measuring equal distances between the outer edges of the design and the edges of the napkin. I marked the napkin, added medium weight cutaway stabilizer, hooped the napkin, and embroidered the design, following the same steps as for the placemat.

And now your place settings are complete! Embroidered linens are a fabulous way to dress up the dining room for festive holidays, and make special occasions even more special.

Below you'll find more great examples of how to mix and match borders, corners, and other designs to create one-of-a-kind dining decor. Enjoy!