I have several oilcloth tablecloths - they progress/descend from dining table to garden table as they get old and faded. Cutting-edge Sanderson prints, doncha know.

And I agree with DontCallMeBaby that treating tables as disposible is a far greater crime. Get thee over to Ethical Living immediately.

Oh great - I was hoping that would be the case . Thanks!

no hemming required.

we use oilcoth because purple paint stains.

and because dd2's tremor means that everything gets spilt.

i confess to owning three patterns but i do have cloth cloth as well, and moslty for adults and visitors we just have the table....

I agree they're a bit naff but we have one anyway. We bought it after the first biro on oak table incident, and I'm converted. Once our children are old enough not to completely wreck the table we'll get rid, but in the meantime... We're on our second one; the first started to look a bit grubby after a couple of years.

We get ours fromJust Wipe who are very good and have non-shiny ones which wipe clean just as well as the shiny ones.

This is probably a dim question but here goes! If I buy some oilcloth by the metre for a tablecloth, do I have to hem it?

Great for painting sessions with the LOs, or cooking projects with them. Just wipe clean!

I don't have one and my table has lots of felt-tip pen marks on it. Was browsing here for something to protect the table, I didn't realise they were a fashion crime.

cos our table is crap

I got mine as the table already had some felt tip on it which is hell to get off and I didn't want any more.

Got it here:-

http://www.norfolktextiles.co.uk/default.asp

We have a pine dining table and as someone has previously posted, it absorbs everything.

I bought an oilcloth tablecloth from TK Maxx for about a tenner for a rectangular table. Small spots of food, yoghurt etc wipe off with a bit of kitchen towel.

I throw mine in the wash on 30 degree cycle and line dry in 2 hours. It's good to go again

Just saves your table getting ruined from, in my case, a 1 year old!