So, I haven’t done a d.i.y post in a while but I’ve been up to quite a few things round the house in recent months so expect a possible flurry of them soon! I find these kinds of post slightly daunting as I’m terrified of patronising people. But actually I got to thinking about why I feel like this and concluded that I google ‘how to…’ all the time so this may be silly. Do you find that you get straight jacketed by an inner voice on things? Anyway, onto the post in hand. So what I wanted was a tablecloth for our summer party last weekend which had to fit a large trestle table for food (we had nearly 60 people). I wanted to find something that didn’t cost the earth or was so bold a look that it drowned out the pretty party pieces I’d decided on. I had a vague dream based on this beautiful renovation by Royal Roulotte and I kept coming back to the idea of monochrome polka dots, they seemed versatile, fun and not too girly. I wanted something a little less straight or standard than this, in my mind black confetti! This may not come as a surprise but I struggled to find monochrome confetti fabric anywhere. After a little hunt around on Google ‘how to paint polka dot fabric’ I realised that it’s enormously simple and most people just use the eraser part of a pencil to impress their circles. I was really pleased with my intentionally asymmetric rustic result so I thought I’d share it with you.

For this craft you will need:

• A plain cotton tablecloth (I bought this from H&M as it was the perfect size for the trestle table)
• Dylon black fabric paint
• A pencil with eraser (I used standard sized but would now quite like to try a jumbo sized pencil with multicoloured dots)
• Some bin liners to put under your fabric
• A shallow pot to dip fabric paint

Once you’ve found your flat surface (the trestle table made sense to me) you will need to line it with a plastic barrier as this paint can really run through the fabric when first applied. Try out your dots on a piece of cardboard to ascertain how much paint you want to coat the eraser in, I used a fairly decent amount. It’s also a good idea to trial for the pattern, I was fairly sure I wanted something un-uniform but tried out very precise aswell just to make sure. Then go for it, place your pencil rubber wherever you fancy a dot, start with less and do them methodically, then go back round and add more to areas that look a little bald. Press harder in some places than others to get an uneven effect. Once you’re happy with the print, iron the fabric on a high setting and you’re good to go (or wash it like me to make double sure of the stick). Eh voila a super simple party piece that you can use time and again!

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