Budding engineer

Today, after class at Morceau I finally got to the homeware/ hardware store on the edge of Penrith. Every month I promise myself that I will go and buy a length of table protector and every month I ever forget completely or I just forget to measure the table. Today I only remembered the first but fortunately both my husband and my 6 x 24 Creative Grids ruler were at home so I was able to go and part with my £17.34 for 2.2 meters of the stuff.

The reason I wanted it was that I sew on my dining room table. It's a good size but is a very polished table and so I have to keep the cloth to protect it, which then slips and slides if I drag fabric over it, especially if I am quilting. It is also so flimsy a cloth that I can't pin directly on the tabe top and end up using my ironing board as a narrow table top.

So I drag the protector stuff home in a state of great self-satisfaction and anticipation and..... yup, that slips and sides too. Grrr. Dennis said something along the lines of 'Perhaps it's the table, because its so polished and there is nothing you can do...'. Red rag to a bull - never tell me I can't do somthing!

So here is my solution.

First tie the protector on with ribbon by passing ribbon over the table like a parcel. and tying it around the table legs.

Much better. However, it still slipped, albeit with a restricted movement range of two or three inches rather than right off the edge. Still annoying though, so I tried to tighten the knots. But inevitably when you let go there is a tiny bit of slack in the ribbon.

'It needs a kind of torque system," I pronounced to a bemused looking Dennis, who has been standing obediently, with his finger holding down the ribbon on the top of the table while I crawl around under it. "Go get me a chopstick."

But I am far too imparient to wait the, oh, twenty seconds at least, it takes to produce the chopstick and in the meantime have laid a a hand on a stray thread spool. Slipped under the knotted ribbon it got me the tension to limit slipage to about half a centimeter. I then slipped a tiny little wad of protector between the ribbon and the lower edge of the table rim and ... BINGO.... a non-slip quilty table! Yeah.

A slight flaw is that white ribbon would be better because the peach shows through the table cloth but that's easily rectified with a shopping trip. A bonus is that on top of the protector the cloth now does not slip so I don't even need to remove it for quilting.

Now, before I go to bed is there anything else I'm not supposed to be able to do?