Christmas Memory Tablecloth

So many titles for this post. The Never Ending Project. What the Heck was I Thinking?? How Long Can One Person Really Delay?

Every year for the past fifteen years my mom has gave me a tree ornament with the a picture of the kids and their hand print on the back. Well they started out as tree ornaments with Clayton but as he's gotten bigger so have the 'ornaments'. Usually I hang them on the wall instead on a bead rope with all the years in order. The kids love looking at them and remembering when. 

Earlier this year, I was purging out my Christmas stuff and thought I had better do something with those ornaments to preserve them. I debated laminating but some are too thick to go through the laminator. Or perhaps scrap booking them, but that idea was quickly tossed as I liked them out on display. Then I remembered when the quilt my mother-in-law made for Ryan's sister for her wedding. She took family pictures and used transfer paper to put them onto quilt squares for a really nice quilt.  I figured I had too many for a quilt but I could make a tablecloth with the same idea.

I decided to take a picture of each ornament, crop it out on Paint and flip it, paste it into a word document and print it out on some iron on transfer paper. Oh, doesn't that sound so simple? Like a quick little weekend project even? Yea, started this in April, crunch time aka Christmas is quickly approaching,  and we're not done.

The cropping took forever. I'm sure there are many easier ways to do it than the way I did it, but I don't want to hear about them as I'm finally done every last one of those 60 billion pictures. Work got in the way. Avoidance got in the way. You get the picture I'm sure.

Anyways, Mom and I stopped in Bed, Bath and Beyond and grabbed a really big white tablecloth that was on clearance. It happened to be so long that I could use the end of it as a trial area as I was going to have to cut it off anyways.

I wanted to see if the fabric was even going to hold the picture or not. It's not cotton like it's supposed to be but it was only 8 bucks for a huge tablecloth!

The test picture after washing. Success! Although I did learn not to leave the iron on as long as the directions said. You can see the outline of the iron in one spot where it got too hot.

I decided that I wanted the tablecloth to be just a little more, so Mom and I grabbed some green cloth from the fabric store and sewed on a strip around the outside and also down the middle, sectioning off each kid's area.

Ignore the fact that's it's wrinkly! I just grabbed it out of the bag a few minutes ago to take this picture. I've now got all of Clayton's pictures printed out onto transfer paper and need to cut them out.

Then comes the real test. Can I fit all of his pictures onto his area leaving room for this year's and possibly next year's too? Also, how long can I delay doing this? Will I ever get the rest of the kid's pictures printed out? Did I mention that we rarely, if ever, use a tablecloth??

I think I'll have a shower and call my mom. She'll make me finish it. And she'll iron for me too!