oh, that's right... i promised a post about the curtains!
/
I procrastinated on making curtains for years, intimidated by the size of the project.
Granted, I took sewing lessons as a child and won ribbons at the Florida Strawberry Festival and Hillsborough County Fair for quilts and stockings and stuffed animals and clothing I made.
But, y'all. That was a few decades ago.
Since then, I've hemmed a couple of things and repaired a few others. That's it.
Let's be honest: I've put most items to be hemmed or fixed into a drawer and forgotten about them until they've been outgrown.
The scariest part to me was the size of the fabric. I can't draw or cut in a straight line - could I sew a long one? If I messed up, would I ruin something and be out the cost of a whole lotta fabric?
And picking fabric? What if I made the wrong choice? I'm toocheap thrifty to discard it, so then I would be stuck with drapery I hated.
If I had taken a fraction of the effort I spent worrying about making a mistake and devoted it to doing the work, I could have made enough curtains for all of us.
A line of Premier Prints fabrics (including this one and several others that aren't made anymore) had caught my eye early in the search, but none of my local stores carried the exact print and color. Finally, I checked out similar designs of the fabric in stores and then hoped for the best with the color. (Yes, I could have ordered a swatch first, but I'm impulsive.)
I like fabric.com, though I stalk fabrics until they're on sale or until the site offers a coupon. Remember, I'mcheap thrifty. This print is $12.98/yard right now, but a sale plus a coupon made it $7.98/yard when I ordered. (Granted that was three or four years ago, and I haven't shopped fabric in the past year, so that sort of deal might be elusive nowadays. My total was right around $90 for seven panels worth of fabric, including shipping and a good bit of extra fabric because I was scared of under-ordering.)
If my rust and taupe designs (called Arizona and Denton in PP land) aren't your fancy, Premier Prints has a lot of other options. For curtains and other home decor fabrics, I look for this in the description: "textured 81% cotton/19% rayon (similar to barkcloth) fabric." All of these have it. That's the stuff I prefer in their line, but it seems like they are moving away from it.
A lot of other cute prints are available in a cotton duck fabric, which would work too, but it won't have the same burlap-ish look with the texture that my curtains have. (That said, I'm a fan of the kids' line of screenprinted duck fabrics - prints that are all over the place in stores and etsy lately - so I might use them in a future project. Plus I think the duck would work better in our master bedroom than barkcloth, so I'll probably go with that there too.) Some are also available in a 100% cotton textured fabric that's supposed to be like barkcloth, but I haven't seem it and I'm not sure how it compares.
Then I bought curtain hooks from ebay and curtain rods from Lowes (a splurge for me, but I really like the color and birds... and I use half of a long rod, links above, and half of a short rod to create an in-between length that fits our wider windows at this house while saving $5 per rod).
As you'll see in this post, we had a cute yet destructive reason for replacing the original support brackets. I'll be painting the wood ones but I haven't gotten around to it yet. (I can't offer a link for the wood supports, given that my father-in-law made them to my specifications, but he does contract woodworking, so let me know if you want some, and I'll connect you with him!)
I measured how high I wanted the rod to go, and then cut a third of that length (plus two inches) in my contrast fabric and two-thirds of that length (once again, plus two inches) for the main print. I just made each panel the width of the fabric, so no cutting or measuring was necessary there.
Then I pinned the two pieces of fabric together for each curtain and sewed them with a seam of about an inch. And I hemmed each end, once again using about an inch of fabric.
I bought lining and planned to finish the sides and cover the seams, but them I decided I liked them a little raw. I might have made the seams a little prettier if I had known I wasn't covering them, but perfection is the enemy of good... and good is good enough for me, so I'm glad I didn't know.
The sides don't unravel, even when I've washed them. They kind of have a burlap-ish look to them, though burlap wasn't really a thing in home design when I made them.
Initially, I had the spotted curtains in our family room and the bird ones in the dining room, but the new house has a different number/arrangement of windows, so our front room has mismatched curtains.
And I like it.
For me, the hardest part was picking the fabric, hooks, and rods. Then it's one seam, one top hem, and one bottom hem for each panel. Clip on the hooks, put them on the rod, hang the supports, and put 'em up.
That's it.
 |
| {at the old house} |
Granted, I took sewing lessons as a child and won ribbons at the Florida Strawberry Festival and Hillsborough County Fair for quilts and stockings and stuffed animals and clothing I made.
But, y'all. That was a few decades ago.
 |
| {at the old house} |
Since then, I've hemmed a couple of things and repaired a few others. That's it.
Let's be honest: I've put most items to be hemmed or fixed into a drawer and forgotten about them until they've been outgrown.
 |
| {at the old house} |
The scariest part to me was the size of the fabric. I can't draw or cut in a straight line - could I sew a long one? If I messed up, would I ruin something and be out the cost of a whole lotta fabric?
And picking fabric? What if I made the wrong choice? I'm too
 |
| {at the old house} |
If I had taken a fraction of the effort I spent worrying about making a mistake and devoted it to doing the work, I could have made enough curtains for all of us.
A line of Premier Prints fabrics (including this one and several others that aren't made anymore) had caught my eye early in the search, but none of my local stores carried the exact print and color. Finally, I checked out similar designs of the fabric in stores and then hoped for the best with the color. (Yes, I could have ordered a swatch first, but I'm impulsive.)
I like fabric.com, though I stalk fabrics until they're on sale or until the site offers a coupon. Remember, I'm
 |
| {see the matching chevron print on the wall? it's a matching fabric that I stapled to a canvas. easy art!} |
If my rust and taupe designs (called Arizona and Denton in PP land) aren't your fancy, Premier Prints has a lot of other options. For curtains and other home decor fabrics, I look for this in the description: "textured 81% cotton/19% rayon (similar to barkcloth) fabric." All of these have it. That's the stuff I prefer in their line, but it seems like they are moving away from it.
A lot of other cute prints are available in a cotton duck fabric, which would work too, but it won't have the same burlap-ish look with the texture that my curtains have. (That said, I'm a fan of the kids' line of screenprinted duck fabrics - prints that are all over the place in stores and etsy lately - so I might use them in a future project. Plus I think the duck would work better in our master bedroom than barkcloth, so I'll probably go with that there too.) Some are also available in a 100% cotton textured fabric that's supposed to be like barkcloth, but I haven't seem it and I'm not sure how it compares.
Then I bought curtain hooks from ebay and curtain rods from Lowes (a splurge for me, but I really like the color and birds... and I use half of a long rod, links above, and half of a short rod to create an in-between length that fits our wider windows at this house while saving $5 per rod).
As you'll see in this post, we had a cute yet destructive reason for replacing the original support brackets. I'll be painting the wood ones but I haven't gotten around to it yet. (I can't offer a link for the wood supports, given that my father-in-law made them to my specifications, but he does contract woodworking, so let me know if you want some, and I'll connect you with him!)
I measured how high I wanted the rod to go, and then cut a third of that length (plus two inches) in my contrast fabric and two-thirds of that length (once again, plus two inches) for the main print. I just made each panel the width of the fabric, so no cutting or measuring was necessary there.
Then I pinned the two pieces of fabric together for each curtain and sewed them with a seam of about an inch. And I hemmed each end, once again using about an inch of fabric.
I bought lining and planned to finish the sides and cover the seams, but them I decided I liked them a little raw. I might have made the seams a little prettier if I had known I wasn't covering them, but perfection is the enemy of good... and good is good enough for me, so I'm glad I didn't know.
The sides don't unravel, even when I've washed them. They kind of have a burlap-ish look to them, though burlap wasn't really a thing in home design when I made them.
Initially, I had the spotted curtains in our family room and the bird ones in the dining room, but the new house has a different number/arrangement of windows, so our front room has mismatched curtains.
 |
| {any tips on where to find a not ugly lampshade? i've been putting that off too...} |
And I like it.
For me, the hardest part was picking the fabric, hooks, and rods. Then it's one seam, one top hem, and one bottom hem for each panel. Clip on the hooks, put them on the rod, hang the supports, and put 'em up.
That's it.