Cloth napkin creatures are impressive table decorations, and creating them is a beneficial way to spend a rainy day. Many origami napkin jobs are suitable for kids; even small ones can assist with some basic patterns. Theme your meal or party into your favourite shapes or allow your event ascertain what shuffles, scampers or sails across your table just before landing, fully ripped, on an obliging lap. Be certain to use square seams or fabric to make the folding easier.
Brunch Bunnies
Invite the Easter bunny to brunch and give him pride of place in the center of every flowered charger. A dozen simple folds of a square linen or heavy cotton napkin will possess your brunch table hopping with pastel bunnies who will delight your visitors and catch their toast crumbs or that arbitrary blueberry in the pancakes. Applying stiff fabric — use your own iron when required — means that the bunny ears will appear just like the real thing, until it’s time to unfold them. A mixture of turquoise, lilac, pink and peach bunny napkins, small bunches of tulips in bare glass milk bottles, a scattering of candy eggs across a mint-green tablecloth, and wicker baskets for warm croissants or hot-cross buns makes a festive Easter table.
Hot Dog Dinner
A fuss-free weekend meal with the kids are going to keep you out of the doghouse when you serve a favourite food with a few smart folded Fidos. Assign the old kids the trickier origami folds that become somewhat black Scottie dog. They ought to work with squares of black cloth, hemmed for napkins or pinked to reduce unraveling. In 13 folds, a napkin becomes a bouncy bearded puppy. The younger kids can roll and knot beige or white routine textile napkins into dog bones. Just roll a napkin into a long tube, tie a simple, loose knot in each end, and tuck the loose end back into the knot to generate the rawhide-knot end of each bone. Serve with frankfurters, naturally.
Whale Tale
Why not create a large blue whale to get a beach home picnic of fish and chips? Fold squares of blue linen or cotton canvas into a cocktail of leviathans to dot over the oilcloth- or newspaper-covered table, amid baskets of fried chips and fish, boiled shrimp or crabs, and large cups of conch and potato salads. Whales are easy enough for small kids to create — a half-dozen folds take only a small aid for the preschool set without oversight at all for more seasoned seafarers. Hurricane-covered pillar candles in the center of the table and a curtain of old fishing net over the back of every chair establishes your creamy supper — with custom-crafted cetaceans — above the high seas.
Straightforward Safari Supper
Dine with elephants — grey folded napkins against a zebra-striped tablecloth — if you can not get away to a picture safari. Squares of grey linen or stiffened voile will lumber across a table on the patio groaning with large platters of shish kabob, curry or curry lentil dumplings. A simple elephant fisherman requires nine folds and a couple of squiggles with a black laundry marker to get trunk wrinkles, smiling eyes and mouth. Elephant napkins are just as much fun when employed as a birthday celebration decoration on a circus table with solid-colored cloths and place with tiny tubs of popcorn at every place. Use the voile elephants as decor only; they won’t absorb leakage also nicely. But unfold the linen pachyderms to dab gently in the bit of stew or smear of icing on your own chin.
