How to Fold Turkey Napkins

Purchase or use at least 15-inch square, cloth napkins. If you can't find them commercially manufactured, consider buying fabric, cutting the napkins to size and hemming them. Cotton or linen fabrics work well. The bigger the napkin you start with, the bigger the finished folded turkey napkin.

Lay the napkin flat on a table, and fold it in half from right to left. Match up the edges. The folded edge should be on the right side, and the short edges should be at the top and bottom.

Start at the bottom, short edge, and begin to pleat both layers of the napkin back and forth like an accordion. Make each pleat 1-inch wide. Continue folding the pleats until 3/4 of the napkin is pleated. Finger press your pleats with each new fold or press them in place with a hot iron.

Place each thumb under the stack of folded pleats, and place your index fingers on top of the stack.

Fold the stack of pleats in half in the middle of the napkin by bringing the left half of the pleats under the right half.

Take the top right corner of the unpleated portion of the napkin, and bring the tip down to the bottom left corner of the flat, unpleated portion of the napkin to create a triangle.

Finger press or press with a hot iron along the fold of the triangle that was formed. Tuck the overhanging vertical edge back under so the vertical edge of the triangle is in line with the fold where the pleats are folded in half.

Set the napkin down on the center of a dinner plate with pleats fanned out in the back of the turkey and the point of the folded triangle facing the edge of the table in front of where a dinner guest will be seated.