It has taken a long time, but I have just finished a large undercloth for Lisa's table in natural linen. You may recall, though why would you, that Lisa's table is too wide to make fully covering tablecloths including a double thickness folded edge out of the six yard lengths i usually allocate. If I make the necessary added bands around the main cloth piece out of single, unfolded strips I get raw edges on the back side that will ravel and look ugly compared to the double wide strips that can be folded back to cover all the seam edges on the back. This cloth was an experiment in using french seams to enclose the raw edges and thus result in a neat, un-ravelly back side for my tablecloth. To make the french seams I put wrong sides together, stitched a half inch in, trimmed that seam to a quarter inch (stitching a quarter inch seam on such long lengths of linen would be too hard to control for me), turned the cloth so that right sides were together and stitched again, enclosing the first clipped edge entirely and resulting in a neat tab on the back side. I pulled threads to mark the first half inch seam, and then pulled another thread three eighths of an inch on either side to mark where I wanted to sew for both lines of this two part seam.
The part I never figured out was what to do where the french seams come together with the mitered seam that makes the corners. I ended up getting everything as close as possible and then hand overcasting anything that was left with a raw edge. Its not too bad, but it seems (ha ha) like there must be a more elegant solution. Does anyone know how to do this? I have yet to find a book or You Tube tutorial that addresses it.
I have another big undercloth to make for Lisa, but I am thinking of doing something different...a large quilted square. It would have to be larger than the squares I usually make (which would mean again adding borders) but I think squares are more dynamic on the table than fully covering rectangles. Still, they have to be big enough for all the plates to fit on because a plate half on and half off a tablecloth is uncomfortable. A quilted tablecloth will be more protective for the table than a single weight, but the most important attributes to me are the visual texture a quilted cloth would add and the ease of ironing. Taking care of these big tablecloths is a pain in the tail. I think a quilted cloth would be much simpler to care for and I would like that both for myself and the people to whom I give my cloths. I'm still rolling this over in my mind.