Sewing Project

Christmas Eve day found me with much to do, but as so often happens with me, I get something on my mind and go off on a rabbit trail, leaving the main trail behind...namely finishing up the Christmas preparation.

So, what was the rabbit trail this time?...a tablecloth. Hmmm, sort of strange, but let me try and explain. De'Etta at Choosing Joy, has a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition of having everyone that is at their home for dinner sign their tablecloth. I loved this idea. We don't often have the whole family together for Thanksgiving, so we decided to do it for Christmas instead. Last Christmas I bought a large tablecloth and brought it to to my mom's to use on the table for Christmas dinner. Everyone there signed it and Bessie and I embroidered the names and added the year.

Now, all year long I have looked at this tablecloth and was not happy with it. It was too plain and I liked the idea of having designated areas for each year. (De'Etta, I'm thinking Mike had a similar suggestion?) I had thought of using ribbon, but disregarded that idea. I finally settled on buying some fabric, cutting the tablecloth into squares and resewing it all back together with some nice Christmas fabric for sashing. Of course I didn't come to this final decision until a few days before Christmas, thus the mad dash on Christmas Eve to get it done.

Here is the project before I started cutting. You can see the names from last year over in the corner by Bess.

I cut the tablecloth into eight squares, evened them up and straightened the edges.

Sew, sew, sew! There was yards and yards of fabric to work with.

Here is the fabric I chose. One good thing about procrastinating waiting so long is the fabric was on sale.

And here is the finished project. We have eight nice sized squares. I think I will use each square for the next eight years and then start over in the first square with a different color embroidery floss as there is plenty of room. That will give us 16 years of family signatures.

I had so much fun working on this project. I haven't done a lot of sewing in quite a while and have been wanting to do more. This was a relatively easy project to work on.

De'Etta, thanks for the wonderful idea to add to our family traditions.