Finding Grace Interiors: A dress for a table!

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

A dress for a table!

Years ago I rented a space in my local antique mall. The walls were kinda dirty and had lots of nail holes from the previous tenants.
I wasn't allowed to paint, so I covered the walls with Burlap. Long story short, I no longer have that space but I had lots of burlap!! :)
There is a table in hubby's office holding the computer router (it's inside the basket), phone and lighting. It is a skinny long table designed to be placed behind a sofa. A friend gave it to me in a previous life (before kids) and I painted it black long time ago!

As you can see, there is just nothing appealing. Looks like a sad mess!! and all the cables from computer, lamp and phone were exposed underneath, driving me crazy!

So the light bulb on my head went on and I decided to cover the whole thing up. I've seen some burlap table covers on Ballard's Design and I loved the look, so I got to work and gave my yards and yards of burlap a new life.

Now keep in mind that I am not a pro at all when it comes to sewing, in fact I really don't know what I'm doing, I just plan as I go. Making this dress for this table was kind of like putting a big puzzle together.

First I cut a piece of burlap for the top of the table, so I measure it and left about 1/2" of extra room for seam allowance. I did the same for the front, back and sides.

I marked the 1/2" for seam allowance with a marker to help me keep a straight line of the same measurement all the way down.

Burlap is kind of hard to work with because it gets very loose on the edges, so I run the machine in a zig zag stitch to hold it together.

Then I divided the height of the table in three because I wanted three ruffles. I cut three pieces of burlap of that height, but twice the length of the table to have enough material to ruffle it. Are you following? I know my explanations are not very good!

A trick to cut burlap straight is to find a threat an pull it all the way out, that gives you like a lane to cut straight.

Once I had all the pieces cut and ready, it was a matter of putting it all together. I like to put all the pieces and pin them over the table, that way I can see how is fitting.

First I sewed the top, the first ruffle the sides and the back together. Once that was in place, I just sewed the rest of the ruffles to the skirt of the table. Makes sense?

Again, since I really didn't know what I was doing, it took a lot of thinking and a lot of going back and forth from the table to the sewing machine...

Before all the sides were sewed together, the burlap was very slippery making it hard to stay in place to figure out the next step.

That's when a five year old comes in handy. Yup, I laid my five year old on top of the table to keep it in place. He was the perfect size for it!