You do the math

So, this year I'm making several Christmas presents, one of which is a round tablecloth for our niece, in a fabric that goes with the cherries that Uncle Craig painted on her white kitchen cabinets. To finish off the edges nicely, I found some pretty red braid.

Right there in the fabric store I started doing the calculations -- in my head. The tablecloth is going to be 70 inches across, so the diameter is 70 inches. The braid goes around the edge, which is the circumference. And so all I had to do was multiply the diameter by pi (3.14) to figure out how much braid I'd need.

Are you with me so far? Ballpark, I figured about 220 inches would do the trick, but to be on the safe side and allow for misfortunes, I'd make it 240 inches.

And then I was faced with figuring out how many yards I'd need to have cut. Instead of telling the clerk at the cutting table that I needed 240 inches, and letting her write it down and figure it out, I kept figuring in my head. And somehow came up with 4 yards. The clerk threw in another 6 inches, and I figured I was good to go.

So, last night I got the cloth cut out and put together (joining a strip on each side of a two-yard length to get the width I needed), and proceeded to lay a row of straight stitching around the edge to help me make a clean finish underneath the braid.

I kept stitching...and stitching...and stitching...and it seemed like I had a whole lot more tablecloth than I did braid. I went back to my work table, measured the braid (4 yards and about 6 inches), scratched my head, and finally grabbed a pencil and did the math on the back of a pattern envelope.

How stupid am I? Well, if you've been paying attention, you'll remember that I figured I'd need 240 inches, and then made the leap to 4 yards -- which is 12 feet, times 12 inches, or 144 inches, with an extra 6 inches for good measure. I'm about 90 inches short of what I need.

So, today I have to brave the weekend-before-Christmas rush and hit the fabric store, in hopes that they still have 6 1/2 yards of that lovely red braid.

And I end up with 4 yards of lovely red braid in search of a project. Sheesh!