Lots of Fabric for Not a Lot

When we moved into our new home this summer I knew that I wanted to change up our living area a little. I really like the current trend of very organic fabrics and textures and wanted to remove some of the red in my color palette. But I had a limited budget.

One of my first projects was replacing the cover on my 30 inch round table. It needed to be a circle with a 90 inch diameter. That's a lot of fabric! While browsing in a home improvement store I realized I could get a very large piece of fabric for not much money by buying a drop cloth. I'm sure some of you already knew that, but this was a revelation to me!

Home Improvement Store Drop Cloth

I used it to make these curtains here, plus the large tablecloth and living room curtains. I still have some fabric left and it was less than $30 for the entire package. Not only that, but there were very few seams in it so it made using it for the table cloth ideal. I'd had my first cloth made by a professional but decided to attempt to make this one myself.

So I folded both my fabric and the original cloth in quarters and laid them out on the floor to cut. I gave myself about 1-2 inches of space for the hem and cut out my new cloth. I did take care that the seams fell where I wanted them on the sides. (No one wants a decorative cloth with a huge seam running right down the middle of the table top!)

Then I ironed it and hemed it with a blind stitch by hand. I'm sure you could do this on a machine, but I wanted an invisible stitch. Then I glued ribbon on for some added adornment. I originally fell in love with this table cloth at Ballard Design but not the price, so it was my inspiration for my own. I found the cutting 18 inch pieces of ribbon and using hot glue to attach them in a circle made for the most flat and uniform circle.

What do you think? I think it turned out great and it looks so similar to the original!

The curtains were even easier. We live in a townhouse and our living room sits on the second level behind a tree. We needed something that would provide coverage from someone looking up from the outside and still let in plenty of light during the day. I noticed a lot of my neighbors had half shutters on their windows so I decided to make some half curtains.

I measured the windows and made 3 panels that matched the size of each window. I used hot glue again to fasten my ribbon to the panels in the same proportion of the tablecloth. And they turned out just the way I imagined! (Don't you love when that happens!)

It's a rare occasion when my projects turn out *exactly* like I imagined but this was one of those times. What about you? Do you have projects that don't quite look the way you envisioned them?