Day 751: skirted tables

Don't you love a skirted buffet table (like this one, from Cote de Texas)? Or is that just me? I recently made two of them ... sort of.

My sister was married last weekend and the ceremony was on a patio/overlook at Vulcan Park here in town. There were two lovely map/table/things showing visitors what they can see from the overlook right in the ceremony spot. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't know what to call them. There were big arrows pointing to the airport and the UAB campus and they were tilted so that everyone at the wedding would be able to see them. Not very attractive, to say the least.

I got the bright idea that Wes and I can make some "tables" -- for lack of a better word -- to slide over the map-thingies for the wedding. The construction part was pretty simple -- just some plywood and two-by-threes. I covered them in simple cotton duck fabric.


I can't sew, but I'm pretty handy with a staple gun, if I do say so myself. The fabric I bought wasn't as wide as the tables needed to be, so I devised a way to make a "pleat" in the middle with a simple fold.


There is a pleat on the corners, too, which was an easy way to make them look pretty seamless. To save time (and because it is kind of windy on that overlook) I stapled the bottom of the skirt to the bottom brace of the table.


I don't have a great picture of them finished, but here's one from the rehearsal so you can see the scale. They're pretty big -- a little too big for our little house or I would keep them as they are -- 44 inches tall, and 20-by-64 inches on top, to be exact. I think I'm going to try to take the fabric off and have Wes make a smaller version to use as a desk in the office. We'll add a piece of glass to the top and a great lamp and -- voila! Instant desk. In the mean time, here are a few others I love:






These three photos: Top, Erika Powell; Bottom two, Grant K. Gibson.