curtains up!

What a project! I’m proud that I finished them and part of me wants to make another set…but most of me doesn’t, at least not right now.

So, I introduced you to my sunroom a few weeks ago.

The sunroom was much of the reason we bought this house. Bob and a sweet friend of mine’s husband just loved it. Of all the houses we looked at, we kept coming back to that sunroom.

When we moved in, we left it white and hoped inspiration would hit. We eventually purchased these fabulously comfortable (and right for the price!) chairs, relocated our wine rack and added the table and lamp. The sunroom also serves as the canine dining room.

We settled on a paint color, and added these prints to the wall over the wine rack.

I started searching for window treatments and just wasn’t happy with what I found. And, honestly, that is the reason I learned how to sew. I decided I would just make curtains.

Yeah, right, like it’s that easy.

Luckily for me, my husband bought into my madness and gave me a sewing machine for my birthday. I found the fabric for the window treatments shortly after and made the cornices for above the back window (no-sew, no fuss). I went ahead and bought the necessary fabric for the curtains when it was on sale a long time ago and it’s sat in the corner of my “sewing closet” while I figured out how to use the blasted sewing machine.

A close-up for Molly :)

After I could put it off no longer, and after I was tired of being asked by my husband when it was exactly I was going to make those curtains, I decided to get to work.

I wanted to make Grommet Curtain Panels, so I found this tutorial online.You can read the instructions at the link above, but here are a few photo highlights from the process and a few thoughts from the mind of a novice sewer:

- To make curtains, you need to have plenty of patience, plenty of space and these friends:

I used my dining room table (with pads to protect the surface of the table) and the floor next to it – behind a baby gate and safe from puppy paws and teeth.

- You know that old adage Measure twice, cut once? Measure twice, three times, maybe even four times, trust me.

- From the tutorial - Step 3: Place a yard stick, or other straight object, along one side and use scissors to cut the edge so that it is perfectly straight. Repeat the process on the remaining three sides of the fabric so that the fabric does not have any irregular edges. Yeah, that’s pretty important. Cutting blindly across your fabric will result in a jagged edge. Don’t ask me how I know.

- It's handy to have a boy with box cutter to cut the holes for the grommets and who's willing to snap them into place...

Safety first

...and to hang the curtains when they're done!

...with a couple of cute supervisors, of course.

 
  

And, tada! They're done!