Buy once - Use twice

A long time ago in a land far far away, I lived in Michigan. My husband and I were hosting Thanksgiving for my family and his and I needed to get things ready to go. When I lived closer to my family, I would have just gone over to my mother's house and raided the closets and cupbards for the linens and dishes that I needed for Thanksgiving. Since I now lived about 80 miles away, it wasn't quite as easy to do. So I put on my creativity hat and thought about it.

What I needed most were tablecloths for the two large antique tables that I would be using. I was going to push them together to make one long dining table, so I needed something that would be consistant for the long expanse. I was also on a budget.

What I came up with was felt. Red felt and a little bit of cream felt. I bought several yards of it for about $3 a yard as I recall, and I also purchased a pair of pinking shears. The shears cost more than all of the fabric! ...but only by a little. I put the felt on the table, weighted it down so it wouldn't move and I cut the felt with the pinking shears around the tables. It was exactly the shape of each table. I used the red on the table tops and the cream was being used as hotpads on the tables, maybe even a table runner type of idea. I can't quite remember at the moment. I think I may have even cut out leaf shapes and put peoples names on it.

The tableclothes were a hit, to say the least and the dinner was fabulous as well. A few days later as I was finally getting the tables moved back to their original locations I realized that most of the felt was in great shape. Only a couple of spills of food in a few spots. I now had all of this felt and it was a shame to throw it away, which was my original intention.

I got out a dinner plate and a lunch plate - traced around them and used those two sizes as templates. I grabbed those mighty expensive pinking shears and started cutting out circles. Large ones and small ones out of the felt that was left, after I cut out all of the "spoiled" felt.

I made plate protectors for all of my heavy bowls that I stack together. I used some of them for my plates and platters that don't get used too often, but are stacked on top of one another for long periods of time. I still had lots of felt left over, so I made stacks of 20 - 10 small and 10 large for several family members for Christmas.

I used up every cent of the $25 I spent on the felt and the shears. It was truly one of my better ideas.

I have posted this for Make Do Mondays - hosted by Ann Kroeker. She asks us what we have done to make do with what we have, or how we wear it out or decide NOT to buy something because we really don't need it. This is a new blog carnival so be sure and go over and take a peek.

I thought this would be a perfect Works for me Wednesday post. Childrens birthdays, Easter dinner, St. Patrick's Day are all times when you might want to prepare a family meal and a nice felt tablecloth might just be the ticket for an inexpensive cover. Please go see more tips at WeAreThatFamily, the new host for WFMW.

...and this certainly turned out to be even more thrifty than I had originally intended! So it qualifies for Leigh's Thrifty Thursday at Tales from Bloggeritaville.

I will link to those posts as the days arrive.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Kristin