Tag Archives: vlisco

Playing with Fabric this Week

We are almost to the weekend! Lots of sewing this week but not a lot of pictures to share.  I had three custom orders on Etsy which are always fun. I like when a customer just wants a certain color or size. It is easy to make what they want and they get just the right thing.

I did squeeze in a bit of selfish sewing time though. The red fabric that I posted about earlier this week was calling to me in the worst way. After a bit of thinking, I decided to make a tablecloth with it. The colors are perfect for my dining room. See what you think.

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The print on this piece is so bold and has great detail so I really hesitated cutting it up. Using it as a tablecloth is the perfect way to show off this fabric. However, the fabric was only 46″ wide which wasn’t nearly wide enough. Because there is a gorgeous green and gold border on the fabric, and because I had six yards of fabric, I decided to double up on the border to gain the width.

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First I cut the length of fabric in half. Following that, I cut the border off of both sides of one of the lengths. I included about five inches of the red when I cut the border. It took no time to sew each of those borders to the length of the fabric, giving me the length you see above. Then I only had to hem under all of the edges.

The only issue I had was that in my excitement to make the tablecloth, I didn’t prewash the fabric. I know, I know… silly mistake. Once it was all done, I threw it in the wash. Luckily, I didn’t put it in the dryer. Even on a cold water cycle, it shrunk a fair amount. If I had washed it first, I would have left a larger border on each side. It fits the table reasonably but it would be perfect were there two more inches hanging on either side. Ah, what can you do? It still looks lovely.

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Best part of this is that I still have three yards of the center of the fabric, right? This huge piece that I sliced the borders from is sitting in the sewing room, begging me to make something with it! Life is good.  🙂

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts, Let’s Bee Social, and TGIFF.  Links to all of these are located at the top of the page, under Link Ups.