New Curtains!

 Do you have an hour? A Yard or more of cute fabric? Make yourself some curtains, they will change your life room.

Before - Old scratchy lace curtains. Once they were white, but a layer of dust and food particulates has made them more "off-white". These are so boring I often forget I have curtains, only noticing when it's cold out and I want to cover the windows.

After - Holy shit, look at how cute that fabric is. I could have made a dress from it and ended up looking like Ms. Frizzle teaching food preservation. But for simply displaying an awesome print in all its glory, housewares are a sure bet.

Beehives overlooking the mead stash? Yes please! These curtains also offer a bit of shielding, like actually blocking one's view and darkening the room. Thus waaaay more useful than the fruu-fruu lace business.

  Each one took well under an hour, a bit more than a yard of the fabric, and the same cut of muslin. I ripped all my fabrics for square pieces. The three windows were slightly different dimensions, but I used the width of the fabric (44") as the horizontal measure. A little extra makes for some bunching and curling, not to mention good coverage. I ripped both fabrics straight down the center to split them.
 I measured the existing curtains, and the thickness of the rods. The lace curtains have a trim above the rod, about the same width as the rod space, which gives them a nice ruffle.

I marked double the rod thickness, and sewed the sides and bottom.  Line up the selvedge edges, it's easy to see thru the muslin and stitch right at the end of the print.

The last 2.5" of each fabric are rolled and stitched, this will be the rod holes. (Insert sex joke here.) Then the top is stitched, right sides together. The whole shebang is turned through either of the holes, just like a pillow or stuffy.

After turning, I top stitched the sides and bottom, stopping and starting at my rod holes. Two rows of stitching made across the top sandwich the rod and leave a little ruffle on top.

Out with the ineffective, boring, old curtains; In with some cute, colorful, functional pieces! Even my kitchen fairy seems to approve...

Such a small change, but it's impacted the kitchen in a big way! Much faster than a new coat of paint, but it's almost as big of an impact. I may end up with some spares to switch out, I do have enough fabric stashed away after all...

Go make stuff that brightens your life!