Quck DIY Tablecloth Ideas

Likely much cheaper and more satisfying way to change up your table with fabric is a quick trip to a fabric outlet or craft store. A quick google search for fabric outlets in your area will surely turn up some choices where they sell discontinued, slightly flawed or remnant lots of fabrics often for $2.00 to $3.00 a yard. Even if you pay a little more for that for something special, you’re likely to be ahead of buying pre-made table cloths. In all the times I’ve covered tables with bolts of un-hemmed fabric I’ve never once had anyone even notice let alone care that the sides weren’t hemmed.

A trip to a local fabric outlet can give you hundreds of options for tablecloths, napkins, and table runners you can cut and use in minutes. There’s lots here for around $3.00 a yard and you’ll find patterns and textures you’d never find in commercially pre-made table covers.

Fabric outlets offer patterns and prices that are hard to match in commercially pre-made table textiles. This trip I ended up buying one just behind the one that is rolled open to use for a friend’s Easter table. (See Photo Below)

Pattern – Fabric outlets are a great place to find patterns for special events that you’d never find in ready-made tablecloths at retail. Retail, especially in the housewares areas, has become much too safe and tends to stick to solids or very neutral patterns. Pattern is also so personal that it’s not likely a retailer will carry something that gives you the same unique edge you could find in fashion fabrics in a fabric outlet.

One of the fabrics shown in the racks in the fabric store in the image above proved to be an amazing way to create something new and festive with a table set with everyday white dinnerware.

Burlap has a great texture. It’s like linen but bolder and shows up better from a distance and in photographs. Ironed it can be very dressy and if you wet it and let it dry naturally without ironing it looks very natural and casual.

Burlap – A friend of mine who’s a well-known event planner and TV personality told me that the #1 decorative fabric for weddings for the past 5 years is burlap. Burlap, a fabric made from jute fiber, has bold linen-like texture. Besides being cheap compared to linen it the texture is bolder than linen and shows up better in photographs. As I started browsing Instagram and Pintrest I was blown away by how creatively stylists have been using burlap to get looks ranging from elegant to farmhouse and everything in between. Burlap dyes easily and it’s easier and more interesting to deliberately fray burlap edges than hem them.

Inexpensive burlap makes a great table covering for both casual and dressy occasions.

Burlap works well with vintage flea-market looks as well as other styles like contemporary and coastal.

Linen look fabrics are easy to get inexpensively online or at fabric outlets and can be turned into high-end looking table textiles by simply fraying the edges. No hemming or sewing needed.

Linen looks – If you want to use the same fabric for napkins as for runners or other table coverings burlap is a little rough for that. Most fabric outlets and even digging online will turn up some rayon blends that look like broad-weave linen at a fraction of the price. The advantage, again, is that you can get away without hemming it by simply cutting it and fraying the edges.