David and I both grew up camping and have been camping all throughout our marriage. Our classic red-gingham check tablecloth has been with us these last ten years and has seen scores of campgrounds.
Here we are, so young and sun-kissed, camping at the beach with some dear friends of ours (miss you guys!), playing one of our favorite games (we love this vintage version), on our traditional tablecloth.
This year, we decided it was maybe time to give the ol' table covering a new life. It's covered many a table and despite its durability, it's starting to look a little worn. I knew it wasn't destined for the trash can though. I had other plans in mind...
David loves his grill. It's compact enough for our little patio and for taking on camping trips, but it serves us well and grills our food nicely. Our patio is partially covered but the grill has still has to endure some weathering and it was longing for a cover. So why buy when you can repurpose?
Here's how I repurposed a table cloth into a BBQ cover.
First, I draped the tablecloth over the BBQ inside out. Instead of using pins which would have poked big holes in the plastic, I used clothespins to roughly fit the tablecloth to the grill, being careful that the opening would be big enough to go over the biggest part. This was no exact science.
I flattened out out the top into a triangle to make a boxed seam (like in the bottom of a tote bag- you can see details on how to make the squared bottom of a bag here). I pinned this with clothespins, too. I'll show you that corner again later.
Next, I sewed the side seams, using a slightly longer stitch than normal (size 3.0 on my machine).
I took my roughly-pinned box corners and made them nice and flat and drew a line with ball point pen from pin to pin. I sewed from pin to pin along the marked line to make a nice square corner. You can see a close up of this seam up above in this post.
(Thanks to my adorable assistant.)
And I'm so pleased with the finished product!
Affiliate links included. Thanks!