Sewn: Pieced polka dot tablecloth and napkins

Now that my office/sewing room has been reorganized (I'll post pictures when the doors to our storage finally come in), I have space to create once again! Hooray! After completing some mending projects, I set off to cut into some of the fabric purchased at last year's Stoffmarkt (fabric market). I knew I wanted to create a tablecloth and napkins, but I wasn't sure about the design...it took me a while to figure it all out!

I had seen this tutorial for a pieced tablecloth last fall and had filed it away for 'one day'. It ended up being a great springboard for what I ended up making! I also used their clean finish corner tutorial to make neat corners on my tablecloth. I wish I had also used it with the napkins, but oh well. If you haven't checked out the Sew4Home sewing site, you should - it's got tons of great home dec projects with well-photographed guides; perfect for a beginner like me!

We're really happy with the end result! I have to say cutting the fabric was REALLY hard for me. Not only was I trying to do it on the floor (long story), but I discovered it had been cut and printed crooked, so once I tore off the edges to at least find the grain, I then had to just tell myself to 'deal' w/crooked prints and ignore them so my project would hang properly. Then I realized I should have used less tension in my stitching on the center panel of the tablecloth; it puckers here and there and no amount of ironing will get it to chill out, so unless I want to have a seam-ripping party, I'm going to have to live with it. I also must improve on my straight-seam skillz. This is mainly due to my impatience and desire to see it finished, no matter how crooked it looks. I need to slow down!!

But it's super cute! I love the little white polka dots next to the white pom-pom trimmed chair pads! I love that making napkins is easy, and I'm definitely going to make more. I just plan to make them bigger next time...a little 'oops' of mine for making them only 17" (43cm) square this time around!

If you'd like to make this tablecloth, here are the measurements I used for my Björkudden Ikea table. Keep in mind this is for our little kitchen table, meaning I didn't want a long, formal overhang! *I did my measurements in metric just because I have a hard time with math and it's easier for me to deal w/metric decimals rather than Imperial fractions.

The finished tablecloth is 150cm x 105 cm (or roughly 59"x 41"), allowing for a 15cm (~6") overhang on all sides.

* 2 panels (mine were red) 48.5 x 156cm (or ~19" x 61")
* 1 panel (mine was floral) 22 x 156cm (or ~9" x 61")

My napkins were supposed to be 50 x 50cm, but I ended up making them only 17" square, which is really too small, I think. That's what I get for mixing Metric and Imperial with my own little ideas of how big an informal cloth napkin needs to be, but live and learn, right?!

Assemble using the applicable sections of this tutorial, finishing your outer hem and corners with this tutorial. Assuming you don't have the freak-out problem I do when it comes to cutting fabric (ie, I measure about 400 times before I cut), the table cloth and four napkins should take you just a morning or afternoon to complete. Yay for finished projects!