Fire Pit Cover

Hubby & I got this little fire pit not long after buying our house a few years ago. It's not much, and technically I'm not even certain we're supposed to burn outside within city limits. Don't turn us in and I won't tattle on the chicken people. ;)

Photo from Cabela's

When we got it, hubby decided he wanted a cover for it so it wouldn't get full of water when it rains & the bottom won't rust out. My original plan was to sew one, but that was before I even had my sewing machine, so we settled for making one out of a heavy-duty shower curtain. It's held up surprisingly well the past few years, with just a few necessary duct tape patches. Unfortunately, it didn't fair so well in this spring's hail storm.

Golfball-sized hail isn't something to be messed with!

So now it's time to make a (hopefully) more permanent cover. I decided on some marine vinyl that I was able to pick up at JoAnn's. When I first measured the diameter of our fire pit, I decided that I wanted to make a 60" diameter circle. I thought it would work perfectly because home dec & vinyl fabric comes on 60" bolts. Right? Wrong! It's only 54"! Argh... Fortunately I got lucky & had been giving myself plenty of extra room with the 60" circle, and it turns out the 54" circle is perfect.

The first step was to draw & cut out the circle. I measured & marked up my center point, then used a piece of ribbon with a Sharpie poked through it to draw my circle. It's a little hard to see here, but I ended up with a pretty much perfect circle!

Fortunately there's nothing in Goose's room right now, so I had plenty of room to lay out my piece of vinyl to draw the circle.

Now I have a decision to make - how in the world do I put in my drawstring? My very first plan was to actually make a casing & use elastic, but the circle would have to be quite a bit bigger to fit around the wide part of the fire pit, so I decided to use a drawstring instead. Originally I was going to stick with the casing idea, leaving an opening or putting in buttonholes to have the ends of the drawstring come out to tie. When I started thinking about it though, it's going to be pretty tough to thread the drawstring through the casing. Also, folding over the edge of the circle, basically hemming it, to create the casing just won't work, unless I cut notches in the edge. My thought now is that maybe I had some sort of "belt loops" around the edge to run the drawstring through. I'm starting to think that might be the best way to go. Anybody have any better ideas? I'm open to your suggestions!

Since the vinyl won't fray or anything, I really don't need to worry about finishing the edges, so as soon as I figure out how to do the drawstring, I'll be able to get it finished up. Hopefully a nice, quick, & easy project. Hopefully!

Until next time...