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Jan 21, 2013

Sometimes I need a swift kick to the butt

We've been slowing chipping away at lingering house projects for a while now. Ideally, I'd like to have everything done before the baby comes in April, which is a pretty realistic goal in my opinion. 
Husband may or may not agree. 

The sliding glass doors off our kitchen didn't have any window coverings when we moved in. We lived with the bare windows for a while, however we quickly realized how cold the room got once the temperatures dropped. With essentially no insulation along the entire back wall of our home, cold air flooded through the floor-to-ceiling glass and our tile floor didn't help the situation. 

So, my Handy Manny husband installed a track system and we hung one panel of Ikea curtains that we already owned. The problem was it didn't quite span the width of the door when closed and it was much too long. 

I had been putting off sewing two panels together and hemming the whole thing because the project seemed intimidating. There was A LOT of fabric to work and I was scared I would botch something and have to start from scratch with new curtains. 


It turns out I was being a big baby because once I dove in, it wasn't nearly as bad as expected. I pinned the right sides of the curtains together and sewed a tight, straight stitch down the entire length. I wasn't too worried about the patterns lining up perfectly because most of the time, the curtains are open and when they're not, you don't see the seam because they are billowy. 


Once I sewed the panels together, I hung the curtains to pin the hem. Because our house is over 100 years old, there is a slight slope to our floors. We call quirks like this "character." ;)

Instead of pinning the hem perfectly straight, I pinned it to the slope of the floor so it would look unison all the way across. I stretched the curtains down to the ground, measured 3.5 inches on the floor and pinned the bottom. Then I took them down and sewed. 



Like I said, it wasn't as bad as I was making it out to be, and it feels really good to cross the project off my list. 


You can't even tell where they were sewn together when the curtains are pulled shut. I left them fairly long because I like the look of drapes that skim the floor. They make the ceiling appear higher.  


Next project: Making curtains for the baby's room. I've never done this from scratch before so we'll see how long it takes me to tackle. I don't really have the luxury of putting this one off for 4 months, so maybe I'll be more motivated this time around!


1 comment:

  1. I've recently been fighting sewing curtains, too! Well, I still am. Great job!

    Amanda Rose
    http://sewmuchtosay.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete