Monday, September 24, 2012

Finished: More Curtains!

Remember when I said I had never really had curtains ever? Now that I've finally made my first pair, the rest of the windows in my apartment feel naked.

It's strange because I want to cover them now, but I'm not entirely sure how I should do it. So much goes into curtains: length, style, fabric, color, and probably more things I can't think of right now.


Curtains aren't supposed to match, right? Because I thought it might look weird if all my curtains had the wandering pleat look. Or maybe it would work and I'm just too lazy because those curtains took forever.

Anyway, my apartment-in-progress has kind of a theme to it. Each room has a season. The green curtains I previously made went perfectly in my "autumn" kitchen/living room. My sitting room is winter. I'm thinking an icy blue or something would work in there, but what about the hallway connecting the two rooms?

We have a rug down sort of connecting the two seasons, but getting the right color for the curtains was perplexing. I had no idea what to do for the style either. I figured it would just come to me when I was ready for them.



And that's pretty much how it happened.

I was at my local fabric shop browsing for children's fabric, when I came upon some beautiful embroidered fabric in a variety of colors. The best part was that the clerk wouldn't cut it until I understood that it was expensive at $5/yard. Ha!

I decided this brown/gold would be the perfect color to work in the hallway. Best of all, it had eyelets in the fabric to let the light in. I don't really want to keep the sunlight out of the area, so much as cover up the ugly view of the rooftops we have.


Originally, I was going to do another Anthropologie knock-off and do a gathered bustle type curtain. It looked gorgeous in my head. But then one of my cats decided it would be fun to uproot all of my plants so instead of having a garden in the windowsills, my plants are all hanging.

They may look cute and innocent...
That meant the bustled curtain was out. It was a very sad day.

Also note the chunks of plaster he's taken out of the wall and windowsill. Tsk, tsk.
So really the only thing left to do was more of a traditional type curtain. I folded all the hems over twice so as not to have any exposed seams and stitched it right up. Like my previous curtains, I used a bath rod to hold them up so I didn't have to deal screwdrivers and measurements and lining things up perfectly.



Annoyingly, even though I measured multiple times, the length still came out too short. I added a panel to the curtain and it doesn't look as awful as I was afraid it would.


There was also exactly the right amount left over to create ties. Not that it matters because my cats have somehow figured out how to unhook it.


Oh well! Now I have to wait for inspiration to strike for the rest of the windows!