Project: table cover
The summer is winding to a close and a number of home projects have gotten done, mostly by me throwing money at the problem. Among the major ones has been getting the driveway pulled out and redone, painting my workroom, installing a new house fan to replace the one that broke over ten years ago, and getting our electrical panel fixed. We still have new can lights to install, start researching kitchen remodel companies, and getting our back fence fixed.
But among those tasks has been a number of little projects that have been hanging over my head. Nothing that is critical to get done, but still have been nagging psychic gnats. Most recently has been to finish the table cover for the game table.
A few years ago I bought a full size game table as a bit of inheritance retail therapy. We love the table and use it all the time. But with rearranging my husband’s office to better function as a combination spare bedroom and office, the oak cover had to find a new home…which it hasn’t. It’s currently on the table and since we haven’t had people over it hasn’t been a hindrance for game play.
So to protect it, I bought a piece of vinyl. This works great but is a little unsightly in that it has no finished edges; and it doesn’t really protect the sides because it’s just not wide enough. So now that my workroom is (mostly) painted and reorganized, I had room to pull out the sewing machine and fix the problem.
Braving a trip to the craft store I actually found a fabric I could live with and it was on clearance. It’s a slightly loose weave cotton and had a bit more give than I would have liked, but the colors picked up the red from the rest of the room, and reflected the blue of the table vault, which was a nice touch.
The idea was to have a approximately 2″ overhang with a double thickness of fabric. The vinyl is exactly as wide as the table and I could anchor the strips on the felt edge that hung over. I cut 4″ strips on the cross grain calculating that I would need three for each long side, and two for the short sides. Ten pieces total. I then stitched them end to end.
Thankfully the lines held true and I was able to follow them for the most part, for the cutting, pressing and stitching at all stages. Near the selvage edge the fabric was pulled a bit and I didn’t always pin right sides together; but the fabric was forgiving enough that I don’t think it will matter.
From there I pressed strips in half, and then again on one side for a 1″ seam. I thought this would make it easier to turn it later. I was hoping to have a nicely captured seam between the felted backing of the vinyl and my trim. I had brief delusions of hand stitching it closed on the back side, but then realized I don’t have time for that. I’ve been watching too much Bernadette Banner, I think.
For the record, pinning took forever. And I restarted it twice. First when I thought I was pinning my pressed edge to the approximate 1″ felt edge, but realized the felt was a little larger and it would show. The second time, when I realized I didn’t really need a full 1″ seam allowance and could use that room to make the trim hang a little longer.
I’m glad that I inadvertently chose a fabric with lines because it made the actual stitching so much easier. Wrangling that much vinyl is heavy and I know I would have never had remotely straight lines if they weren’t there as a guide. Also you may have noticed that I didn’t actually do much of the work in my new workroom because the table doesn’t have the space to manipulate something that big.
I got the trim on and realized that I didn’t really like the look of the short trim. Doubling the fabric made it the right weight to offset the vinyl, but it barely covered the edge of the table and the proportions didn’t look right.
I also decided that I didn’t want to mess with sewing box corners. In order to do them well and have them sit right, even with the fabric a single layer, meant that I would have to take off one short edge, trim it the exact length of the table and restitch it on. Nope.
So I overlapped the corners and then understitched the fabric seam allowance to the felt seam edge to clean up the look. It will keep it from hanging straight down, but I wasn’t going to have the other trim edge to support it anymore.
Since I wasn’t doubling the fabric, I now had closer to three inches instead of two to work with. But I needed something to weigh down the edge. I bought single wide bias tape and used that (folded to the back side) to help. But unfortunately, I didn’t think of this when I stitched the overlapping corners and had to pick out the stitches where it tacked down my pressed edge. I also didn’t need a full 1″ for the seam anymore.
But in the end in worked. I have a table cover I can live with. I don’t recommend working with vinyl on this scale unless you have a lot of space to support the weight. I was always worried when turning a corner, or starting or ending an edge that it would pull to hard and snap the needle. Or worse, pull the needle mechnism and jam it to the side. As it is, I need to take my machine in* because it will only stitch straight stitches.
This project falls under the category of good enough. I can see where my skills need some work. I had difficulty catching the vinyl at times because my lines aren’t straight. You can see it if the fabric pulls slightly. My seam allowance on the bias binding was variable as well. It would have been nice to find a way to have the full double thickness all around the width. I didn’t have enough fabric for that and would likely have to had cut closer to 6″ widths. I could have gone back for more and recut, but it wasn’t worth it. Also, in a sheer fit of tiredness, I got impatient and careless with the iron and melted the vinyl. Oh well.
What this project did do was remind me that I have the general knowledge skills (and with a little practice) could make perfectly fine solutions to some of my fabric based problems. The project list includes the seemingly endless repair pile and alterations for clothes that no longer fit. The latter is a novel concept for me. I previously held onto clothes until I finally admitted that I would never fit in them again, and then donated them. I now realize that with the help of online videos and many, many people devoting their time to producing meaningful content on clothing construction, refashioning, and general sewing skill building, that I can probably tailor or alter them to fit again. I’ll probably document these, stay tuned.
*For those that may be curious, I sew on my mothers Viking Selectronic 6570 sewing machine. She was serious about machines and kept good care of them. This one she had as I was growing up and I remember her making everything on it. I’m glad that I can put it to good use. And it had sass in that red.
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