Tablecloth for Ericka

The good news... I finally unpacked my new machine and took her for a test drive. Man, she's fast! The bad news... we've got some electrical issues to figure out in the garage. Things were going well, for a while, but then I plugged in one too many energy suckers and shorted something in the circuitry. Thankfully, only the garage was affected. But I need to bring the sewing back to the dining room until we can get an electrician out to fix it. Ugh.

But not only lamentations around here. I also wanted to share a recent finish with you. One of my co-workers, Ericka, commissioned me to make a scrappy tablecloth for her future mother-in-law. Her MIL was throwing them an engagement party and she wanted something special as a thank you gift. I talked her through some options and she settled on something inspired by this tablecloth on flickr. It's always been a favorite of mine.

Ericka wanted to pick out the fabric herself so she could have an excuse to go fabric shopping. She told me the dimensions she wanted for the tablecloth and I told her the yardages to pick up and then sent her over to see Lauren at Sew Modern. She came back with a fabulous stack of fabric and I got to work, cutting large pieces and fitting them together to create that scrappy look. Her MIL's favorite color is yellow so the back is a solid Kona Banana and I hand sewed the binding.

I used the same concept to create this as I did a quilt, minus the sandwiching, but instead of pin basting, I just machine basted each side. And I have to apologize for the crappy pictures. I snapped them off quickly before Ericka came to pick it up and my table isn't the right size to show it off properly. And I didn't have much space or any help. But Ericka is happy and that's all that matters.