Dinner (Photo by Zachary Stephens Photography)

Welcome to the first day of anniversary craft week!

Jeremy’s and my one year wedding anniversary is coming up on the 26th, so I’m starting the celebration off right by sharing some of the amazing—or admittedly ill-advised—craft and DIY projects that helped us create our ridiculously fun wedding weekend. I’m not sure if DIY saved us any money in the end (actually, the numbers in my final budget indicate that it probably didn’t), but knowing that our friends and family, an extremely talented and creative bunch, played such a huge role in the preparation made everything about the weekend feel special. We really couldn’t have pulled it off without them!

Tablecloths
The first project started out as both an attempt to save money and an excuse to sew with my friends. It accomplished the latter.

Things you should know before doing this yourself:

• Cute fabric—even when it comes from Ikea—is expensive.
• It takes a lot more time to sew tablecloths than you think it will, and your friends will eventually need to go home/go to work/go feed their cats. 
• You won’t finish in a day, so you should probably spread the stitching out over a few weekends. 
• You should build in even more time if you’re using your grouchy old avocado green Sears Kenmore sewing machine (pictured to the far right below), and the thread tension prefers not to be consistent.

Rolling around in the fabric should always be the first step.

Pictured here: BFF Melanie, lovely Anna, and sweater designer/baker extraordinaire, Amanda.

Measure twice, cut once. Until the cat steals your measuring tape.

“So, do you have a knife sharpener?” (She went to fashion school. Who was I to argue?!)

Amanda taught me how to rip fabric on the grain. This knowledge would prove endlessly useful in future projects.

Amanda sewed on her machine, I sewed on mine. The cats, however, were way more excited about the machine on the floor.

Bear (Beer) Stein (Photo by Zachary Stephens Photography)

Tablecloths in action!