How to sew a circle floor length table skirt

This is my new summer table skirt! I was inspired by fashion designer Johanna Ortiz for this project. My dining room table for the past 12 years is a 60″ round plastic folding table from Sam’s club. I love a round dining room table because it seems you can add chairs and an infinite amount of people can sit and dine together. Or play games…it’s magical.

So needless to say, I always have a floor length table skirt on my table. This time I made a special skirt with a long ruffle inspired by the fashion designer Johanna Ortiz. Although this tutorial can be used to make a table skirt all the way to the floor without the ruffle as well.
First things first with any project…make your first cut of fabric straight, square and on grain. I have a detailed video on this here.

The illustration above shows how to construct your tablecloth.  For a round table, depending upon the diameter of your table, you’ll need to sew together three strips of fabric to make a big square(the dotted blue lines above). You always want a full width of fabric down the center of your table. You never want a seam running down the center of your table!

So depending upon the diameter of your table you may be able to split one width of fabric for the two side pieces.

 

First cut your three widths of fabric to the proper length. Mine needs to be 80″ because my table is 60″ and I want a 10″ drop on all sides to attach the ruffle. I want my ruffle to be 1/3 the drop of the table.

Sew together the three pieces of fabric to make a big square. I also served all my seams because this tablecloth will no doubt be washed a lot.

Sidenote:  If you’re using a patterned fabric make sure to match the patterns at the seams. This means you’ll need to take into account the pattern when you cut your lengths. A large pattern definitely makes this project a little more complicated and will use more fabric. Just something to consider. Then fold your fabric into fourths so you can cut out your circle.

I use my soft tape measure and a thumbtack for this process. Put a thumbtack through the very end of the tape measure and into the folded corner of the fabric, then into the table. Put a hole in the tape measure at the point that would be half the diameter of your tablecloth. Make the hole just big enough for a pencil to poke through. Since I need an 80″ diameter circle, I made my hole at the 40″ mark.

Draw a quarter circle on your fabric. Then cut along the pencil line you just drew.

Unfold your circle and admire the beautiful huge full circle you just made. 

Then, if you plan to attach a ruffle, cut your strips of fabric to make the ruffle. I cut mine 21″ by the width of my fabric.

Sew all your strips together. I had 9 strips of 54″ wide fabric to make it all the way around my 60″ table at approximately 2 to 2.5 times fullness.

After I sewed the strips together I put in a tiny 1/4″ rolled hem, and then gathered the fabric before attaching it to the circle platform. The last step is to attach the ruffle to the platform and serge the final seam.

This is all much easier to understand on the video…

 

My table skirt turned out a little longer than I expected. I’ll probably take it up a bit so the bottom just kisses the floor and the seam between the circle and the ruffle is higher. The idea was for the ruffle to start about a 1/3 of the way down.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result. Stayed tuned for my next table skirt which will be a box pleated tailored table skirt.