Project Update!

Remember Project # 2 - the curtains? It is time for an update.

Here's our inherited curtains, with the fabric I bought, modeled by Tyson.

With the impending Christmas party as a catalyst for progress, I spent some time last week sewing over at my parents.

The back story: When we moved in the house, we inherited some interesting window treatments. Lacy valences, metal mini blinds, and a plethora of these canvas Target tab top curtains.

Now, by themselves the Target basic tab top curtains weren't bad. Yet, they were khaki and a lot of the stuff in our den is khaki. We actually had plans to use the curtains from our dining room in our old house:




But that was when we wanted to paint the den this color:

We thought better of an orange room, while it would have been cool. So we were left with no curtains (who wants a green on green color scheme?).

I've sewn before so I thought about sewing curtains. But then I remembered something I saw on Design Star this summer (that Dan did - loved Dan... he was robbed). Dan took curtains and inserted a stripe of fabric that complemented the curtains. I decided to do the same.

Here's what I did:
1) Found fabric I liked (40% on sale!) and bought one yard

2) Measured my current curtains to figure out where I wanted the fabric (I wanted the fabric to be at eye-height)

3) used sewing scissors (thanks, Mom!) to cut the fabric 18 inches from the top and then 48 inches from the bottom. I was left with a strip of fabric I'll use for the backings of pillows I'm going to make

4) cut my yard of fabric in half so I had 25 inches of height

5) sewed the fabric to the top and bottom piece of the curtains

6) ripped the seams of the old curtains a little in anticipation of a new seam

7) sewed a new seam, making it all one

8) ironed the heck out of them


The fabric was originally $40 a yard and I wouldn't have been able to buy enough for full curtains but I fell in love with the pattern - it incorporates all the colors of our house. So this was the perfect (cost-saving) compromise!


And, here's the final product:


Animal watch: I've noticed each post lately has had at least one of our three in the pictures... they're pretty photogenic, I can't help it!