About a month ago, I began planning to make her a tablecloth playhouse for Ella's 2nd birthday. I had seen several online that were adorable but really expensive. Many of the tablecloths were based on using a dining table or a card table. Unfortunately our dining table has a large trestle so there would be very little space for Ella to play. So, I started looking for card tables. They were expensive as well and all of them came with chairs. So, my husband offered to make a frame out of PVC pipe and fittings. This was a perfect solution because we could make it as tall or taller than Ella and replace parts if necessary or break it down completely. We sketched the design that we wanted and took measurements based on our table at home and Ella's height. Then, I calculated the fabric I would need for the walls since I already had LOTS of fabric on hand. I didn't have enough of "one" fabric to do the walls so I headed to Hancock's Fabric while hubby went to Home Depot. I found lots of fabric on sale and scored a beige fabric that was 108" wide. I bought 3 yards for about a total of $12 thanks to a 40% off coupon. Husband got all he needed (and more) from HD for about $8.
I begin cutting the pieces from the wide fabric from the wall, curtains from some leftover hello kitty fabric that I had on hand, window frames (2) from pink bias tape, the roof from a scrap of brown fabric the door from leftover red fabric from Ella's quilt. It took quite a while to cut the wall pieces because the wide fabric was really cumbersome. But once I had all the pieces cut and pinned together the sewing went really fast. After sewing and fitting it to the frame, I made a few adjustments and decided to decorate the sides with butterflies and letters. I made a theater on one side so that we could do puppet shows. After getting it done, we revealed it to Ella and she ran into it and began popping her head out the windows and giggling. Not bad at all for about $25.
