My oldest daughter loves napkin folding.  We’ve had a couple of napkin-folding books in the past, but Top 100 Step-by-Step Napkin Folds really stands out from the rest.  There is a great attention to detail here, beginning as fundamentally as with the binding.

There is a spiral binding inside a hard cover.  This allows the book to lie flat in front of you, so you have both hands free to execute the folds.  When you flip the book open, you find over 75 of the folds illustrated and categorized with examples of occasions.  It’s a sort of visual index of many of the folds.

An introductory chapter, “Napkin Folds 101,” discusses choosing the right napkins; colors, styles, and embellishments; size, and napkin rings.  Embellishing your own napkins and napkin rings are both touched on.

Then you get to the folds.  There are three sections, for easy, intermediate, and advanced folds.  Each section has a table of contents at the beginning.  The entire book is full-color, with actual photographs of someone performing the folds step-by-step.  A brief introductory paragraph suggests considerations when choosing a napkin for that specific fold, and sometimes suggests occasions for which it’s suited.

The only complaint my daughter had is that the photographs were taken with the photographer facing the fold-er, so everything is mirrored.  She found that tricky, and felt that they should have put all the pictures in upside-down, so they better reflect what she’s seeing when she does the folds.  I can see her point.  Mirroring, however, is also a good skill for students to learn!

All in all, we were very impressed with the quality and attention to detail in this book, and it includes a good variety of folds, from fun to formal.

Disclosure: Robert Rose provided me with a copy of the book to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.