One of the best Christmas gifts my husband and I ever got was a 6-foot-long folding folding table. We don’t have proper dining room furniture (because we’ve never had a proper dining room) and at one point we gave away our table to Tim’s sister because our roommate had a table and she didn’t. Long story short, we use this rad folding table for all kinds of awesome gaming time.
Settlers of Catan, Dungeons and Dragons, as well as all my sewing projects and crafty-ness. However, it is also used for parties in the carport and beer brewing. It’s beginning to get battleworn.
For my brother’s wedding we got him the same 6-foot-long folding folding table, and to personalize it, I made them a reversable table cloth so that it could be presentable. And we also got fabric to make one for ourselves.
Final Product
The final table cloth fits my table exactly and has corners – that is, they are structured around the edge of the table with a touch of fanciness. It’s also reversible.
Materials
- Table you wish to cover
- Masking tape
- Tape measure
- Two types of fabric – I used cotton. Launder it, dry it, and iron it.
- Sewing machine
- Strait pins & thread
- Iron & ironing board
Step By Step
I am not a master sewer and I improvise a lot, but hopefully this tutorial will be helpful in your own problem-solving.
1. Measure and Map
Measure the dimensions of your table. Length, width and then how much overhang you want on each side. Then add one inch around the outside for the hem. Lookit my blueprints!
Use easy-to-remove masking tape (like the blue stuff) to tape an outline of the correct dimensions onto the carpet. My table was so big, I didn’t have any better surface. It worked out really well – I could pin the fabric to the carpet.
Cut out the pieces.
2. Hem
Get your iron cookin’ to the correct setting for your fabric. Then, fold the edge over by about an inch and iron it down as you go. You could skip this step, but then you are more badass than I. Every time I skip this step, I regret it. Making a nice hard crease makes great hems. You could even pin it! Go all the way around – the hem will hold.
Bust out the sewing machine and some thread – I used a contrasting color and just did a regular old straight stitch. Get fancy. Express yourself. I used the edge of the foot along the crease as a guide and just chug-chug-chugged until I’d hemmed all the way around! For the corners, slow down and hit the curve.
Repeat for both pieces of fabric.
3. Sew Together
Put the ‘wrong’ sides of the two sides together and pin them all up. Again, I used the template on the floor to line everything up.
Start sewing around the edge, again using the edge of the presser foot and edge of the fabric as a way to stay straight. The hem stitching and this stitch’ll come out pretty neatly, nice and tight next to each other.
4. Positioning and Pinning
Time to make the fancy corners. Lay out the tablecloth on the table and center it so that the overhang is equal on all sides. Then on each corner two pins will hold it in the right shape.
This is a small decision time. One side of this table cloth is going to have more fancy than the other. Now, don’t worry – both sides will look good, but one will just be more fancy. That side you want to have the most fancy – put that side up for this step.
5. Sew The Corner
Flatten the corner you’re going to sew. Stitch a straight line between the pins. It should make a right triangle with the corner. Repeat on all four sides.
6. Fold The Fancy
Have you ever done origami? This is essentially a squash fold. We’ll take the corner and flatten it out over that inside seam to make a kite shape. Center it and adjust it for maximum fancy.
You can iron these in place. I highly recommend that.
7. Sew The Fancy
I used just about an inch or inch-and-a-half of the zig-zag stitch overlapping a couple of times to secure the corners. You’ll see it on the less-fancy side, so be clean about it.
Repeat Step 6 and 7 for all four corners, and you’re done! Try it on, then flip it over and try it on again! Just in time for Thanksgiving…
