I’ve always loved the look of tailored skirted console tables.  Normally, you see skirts on round tables, but you can really slipcover anything.  Not only does it cover up a less than stellar or mis-matched piece of furniture, but it can give you some hidden storage.

Here are some of my favorite inspiration pictures:

And all of these pictures gave me the inspiration to tackle an eyesore in our bedroom:

Isn’t it pretty???  It was my husbands “entertainment center” in his old apartment, and when we moved into our house, it moved into our bedroom.  It isn’t the prettiest piece of furniture, but it is a good size for our room.  Plus, covering it would save us some money from having to buy a new piece of furniture.  So I got to work!

I decided to use 2 old Ikea curtain panels that I had.  So the cost of this project was FREE!!  (Which is the best!!)  But if you measure your project, you can easily figure out how much fabric you will need.

I measured my table and cut pieces out for the top, the front, and the sides:

On the sides of the pre-cut hanging panels that were not finished (I utilized the edges of the curtain panels!), I finished them with a little Liquid Stitch:

I also utilized the top of the curtain panels for my bottom hem, but if you’re not using curtains then you should go ahead and hem the bottom of the panels.  And then you’re ready to start sewing all the pieces together!

Facing the “front” or good sides together, sew the front panels to the top panel that will sit on top of the console first.  The panels you sew on first  (when you’re going to be overlapping the hanging panels) will be the ones that that are “on top” when you flip the skirt right side out.  I like to overlap the panels just a bit, so that when they hang there isn’t a big gap between the panels.

Next, sew on the side panels to the panel that will be on top of the console.  I overlapped the side panels on top of or over the front panels just a bit.  When you sew the side panels over/on top of the front panels while your work is turned inside out, that means that they will overlap behind the front panels when you turn it all right side out.

Now that you have your skirt all constructed, it’s time to make that ugly table a little prettier!

Now that your skirt is finished, you can embellish it with some ribbon or decorative closures very easily with some Liquid Stitch, trimming around the edges and in the center of the front two panels.

To tell the truth, if I were to do this again, I would have overlapped the side panels more than the couple inches that I did.  I think I might get some decorative ribbon to tie the side panels to the front panels, just to close the small gaps.  But other than that, I’m really pleased with how it turned out!  You’d never know that under that skirt is an old ugly entertainment console.

first set of pictures from: Phoebe Howard, Palmer Weiss via Domino, Jan Showers, Palmer Weiss