Way back wheno I said that I planned this year to do one post a month about a project that I had been planning to do for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to.

I feel this project amply qualifies as I purchased the material to make it almost 2.5 years ago.

At this time my friend had just about finished renovating her kitchen, and was pregnant. I told her that as a housewarming present I would make her a tablecloth. She wanted red gingham, but was willing to settle for anything red and white checks. While shopping for other dress fabric, I found some fabric that fitted the bill that was on clearance for around $2.00/m. I promptly purchased 2 or so metres of it, and then left it sitting in my fabric pile until today.

The first thing I did was pin a hem on the edge of the cloth. It was quite a large hem as the fabric appeared to have been cut rather unevenly.

I started off just fine, but then made the mistake of trying to pay attention to Nick while continuing to sew.

You can’t really see in this picture, but this is the moment when I realise that I’ve managed to wedge a pin beneath the needle/foot. I had to take the sewing machine apart to get it back out! Lesson learnt!

I’m a horribly infrequent sewer (you might have gathered) and I’ve never really learnt to sew properly. Now that I’m older I regret not paying more attention in textiles, where my high school did their darnedest to teach us how to sew properly! This means that I’m always ecstatic when I manage to do something really simple, like sew in a (relatively) straight line!

Due to the number of pins used and the length of the fabric, I found it easier to pin and hem opposite sides first, and then go back and do the other two.

This time, with no pesky Nick to distract me, I managed to sew the other hems just fine.

Once I’d finished doing the hemming I came to the conclusion that I really should have zigzagged around the edges of the material before I started sewing. This meant that I ended up doing things a tad backwards, going back to edge the hems after they’d already been sewn.

It’s just not wrong, just alternatively correct…

End result, a hemmed tablecloth!

You can barely tell that both stitches are there. Unless, you know, you look. Here’s hoping that most people don’t feel the need to inspect the tablecloth while sitting down drinking tea…

All in all there’s probably a few thousand sewers in the blogosphere that could have done a better job (and that are shaking at how this has turned out), but you know what? I’m just happy that it’s finally done! One project down, 99,000 to go…

Have you ‘rescued’ any old projects lately? Or tried your hand at sewing?