An unexpected Project - Fitted Table Cloth tutorial

This week I am staying with our oldest child, Fangirl. She is a wonderful crafter, designing amazing pop culture cross stitches. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and mostly on Instagram by that name

As well as having a blog, and a store on Etsy where she sells her patterns and more recently kits as well, she also goes to craft markets that have a geek theme and has had a stall at the big conventions like Comi Con (Brisbane and Melbourne) and this year will go to Supa Nova as well. 

She asked me if I could make her a fitted table cloth for her stall. They are required to have table cloths and she has been using a queen sized flat sheet that she had clipped into sort of shape but was wanting something a bit more professional looking. A fitted cloth that went to the ground would mean she could hide her extra stock, suitcase etc under the table out of the way and out of sight.

The fabric I had to use was her fitted sheet. I could have bought more fabric but what was the point? That was just going to be extra cost. It worked out pretty well.

The table that she has which she takes to craft markets when she has to supply her own table is 1.8m which is the size of the tables that she is supplied at the bigger conventions so making the table cloth to fit it would work well for both. We decided it would be best to make it a little loose fitting to allow for tables that might be a bit bigger.

I measured the width of the table and cut a strip of fabric that width , plus 4cm from the sheet, cutting it across the shorter of the sides and then trimmed it back to the length of the table plus 4 cms. This was for the tablecloth top.

I cut the remaining part of the sheet into two stips, again width ways which I then joined to make one long strip. This was for the table cloth skirt.

I found the centre of the longer side of table cloth top and pinned the centre seam of the skirt to the centre of the top, right sides together. I pinned it along the front of the top piece  and stitched from one front corner to the other front corner. 

Stitching the corner was tricky and there is probably a better way to do this but I just tried to work it around as neatly as I could. I sort of did it like a mitred corner.

Then I sewed to the next corner and worked my way around it and sewed till I ran out of skirt. Then I went back to my starting point and worked back the other way around the corner and sides and along the back till once again I ran out of skirt.

 I was left with a gap of about 24". Fangirl was happy with this as it gave her access but then we realised that the piece we had trimmed off the table top piece was about the right size for the gap. I hemmed the sides and the bottom and trimmed it to fit the gap and then sewed it table top, leaving it loose on the sides and creating a flap.

And that was it. Done. In about an hour. Its not the neatest job in the world and surely wouldn't win awards. There are no doubt ways to make it neater. Maybe if I had rounded the corners a little it would have been better (suggestions for fixing this are welcome) I did warn my daughter that I am not the greatest seamstress and she laughed and said "and asking a quilter to mend is like asking Picasso to paint your garage" (a meme I had recently shared on Facebook) However it will do the job. No doubt it might benefit from having all the seams neatened and if I had an overlocker that would have made things easier. But it is done and she is pleased with it and so am I. 

When I made it I had no intention of making a tutorial for it so there are no step out photos but hopefully this describes what I did well enough to inspire you should you have need to make something similar.

I am now thinking that I will make something similar for our Handmade With Love stalls. With our glorious leader Peg on the job I won't get away with such dodgy corners so will have to come up with an improvement.

Sunday Stash Report - a couple of little finishes

My projects have all been little things this week.

First of all I made myself some Christmas coaster for our table.
They were rather spur of the moment and they were so fun that rather than stopping with the 6 I wanted for me I made 12, 6 for Fangirl. They don't actually match the table runner I made her but are bright and pretty Christmas colours. I made the pattern up as I went along. I used some of my 5" squares from my scraps. I had a heap of green triangles - not sure where from. They were varying sizes. I fused some double sided applique stuff to the triangle. (the name escapes me at the moment) and also to a strip of brown scrap. I arranged a 1cmx2cm scrap of brown fabric and 3 green triangles on the red squares to resemble a tree and fused them down. I cut 6" squares of batting and Christmas fabric to be the backing for each coaster. I put the backing fabric face down, then the batting and then the red squares with the applique tree on it face up. I sewed around the Christmas trees with a straight stitch, about 2 mm from the edge. So it was sort of Quilt as you go... at least it was applique and quilting all in one. I made sure that all the raw edges had a row of stitching near them. I trimmed the excess fabric off the edges. I used a variety of width of fabric for binding and found that the 2.5" worked the best. Maybe its because that is what I am used to . Mostly I stitched the binding on the back and folded it around to the front and then used a fancy stitch on my machine to stitch it down as neatly as I could. I tried a variety of stitches but the one that I liked the best was one that reminded me of tinsel.

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The 12 coasters used up .8 of a metre in total

Now I am itching to try a table runner with a large Christmas Tree on it that I can use some of these fancy stitches on to be the decorations. Will see how long the urge lasts!!

Then today I decided to make some to go with a table runner I have made as a present. These ones were pieced. I made 8 and use .48m

So the total usage for the week for 20 coasters was 1.28m.

I also made two pot holders as gifts. They are the first potholders I have ever made so was rather pleased with my self. I did crazy patch. As they are a gift and the receiver just might pop by I won't put photos of them up here yet. They are rather cute though. They were 7" square which is 17.78cms and used a total of .24 of a metre each.

Thats a total of 1.52ms for the week

I didn't buy any fabric

Used this week:                               1.521m

Added since last report                 o.0m

Year to Date Used                       140.53m
Year to Date added                       93.47m
Net Used                                           47.08m

Linking up with Patchwork Times

An Unexpected Finish - and a really dodgy tutorial

Didn't think that I would have any finishes before I left for our camping holiday in 11 days but I surprised myself. Its not much but it was a finish. It was a start and a finish all in one day!

 I love my steam mop but the cloth mop heads were falling apart. Not sure if I can buy more of them or not.

My steam mop isn't a big name brand and its just as likely that the shop where I bought it won't carry the consumables that go with it. So I made myself two new ones this morning. I cut up an old towel that has a lot of history. My husband owned it when I first met him. Not sure how long he'd had it but it was the only towel he owned when he moved into the flat that became our first home. I had a small pile that I was able to add to his meagre linen store and our wedding a month or two later further augmented it.

His towel as I recall was pretty thin then and very small for a bath towel. When we got a dog a year or so later it quickly became the dog towel. But 30 plus years later we STILL had it Cutting it up for a mop head was a good use for it. Well I thought so anyway. He looked a little pained when I showed him the remnants. I offered them to him to make something of and he thought they would do well as rags. I agreed. All I did to make the replacement was to trace around the shape of the current one onto the doubled over towelling. When I cut it out I added half an inch for seam allowance. To make the side piece I measured the width and length of my existing on. I added half an inch each end for a turn over and half an inch to the width and then doubled it. I zig zagged the two base pieces together (I did it double because the towel was pretty thin. If I'd used a thicker towel I'd have done it one thickness) Then I folded over both ends of the side piece and stitched them down half an inch each. I folded the side piece length wise and then pinned it around the base piece, starting mid back and ending up back there too, butting the two ends up against each other I stitched it down using an wide seam. Then I threaded elastic through the side piece. I put the mop head onto the steam mop and pulled the elastic tight enough that it held on firmly but so as I could still get it on and off.

I made two mop heads. The second one was made from some towelling I inherited from my Aunty. It was just a strip of towelling. I had contemplated making some hand towels out of it but really... it was pretty ugly fabric and makes a better mop head.