After a couple more days of sewing seams, I practiced sewing a small piece onto a larger piece. I ran out of thread on the triangle, but they don't look too shabby for early attempts.
This weekend, I let impatience win. Rather than practice more seams without actually making anything, I decided to create cloth napkins. I have to say...sewing a straight seam must take far more practice than I anticipated or else I just stink. On the other hand, unless you're actually looking for straight seams, you'd probably never notice, so I guess it evens out. Mom and I went shopping for materials earlier in the week, and I picked out a fun striped pattern that matches my dishes. Unfortunately, they only had one yard left, but I found the exact same colors in a different pattern. Pushing aside my natural tendency toward symmetry and order, I decided to be wild and have napkins in two different patterns. Chaos!! :)
I cut the striped cloth into 20 x 20" squares, which gave me four napkins with plenty of room for hems. I started with this pattern mistakenly believing the stripes would help me maintain straight lines. That is not how it worked out. It did make cutting near-perfect squares easier, but the stripes reveal exactly how uneven my seams are. Live and learn, right? Then I ironed the hems...1/2" which is wider than I wanted, but I found it impossible to iron anything less than that...another something to practice. Then I sewed the edges, which of course aren't perfect, but I made my own napkins!
The moral of the story is that I need much more practice, but I feel better when I'm creating something, even if it doesn't look perfect. One of these days when I'm able to produce straight seams, I'll bore you guys with more photos! :)