I made curtains!

Or, at least, refashioned some curtains. I've had wide open windows on the front of my house, so that all of my weird streaming choices (hi nat geo I'm making my way through your entire oeuvre) can be seen by anyone walking by at night. Not that a lot of people walk by; it's the principle of the thing. (There's only sidewalk on one side of the street and its not on my side!)

I had been kind of dreaming about Marimekko curtains with filmy white curtains behind. And then I actually looked up the cost of Marimekko fabric and scrapped that plan. The pattern I'd been dreaming of is $63/yard, which means (since you can only order their fabric in full yards) $315 for curtains. Presumably at that point you get free shipping from Sweden?? I am not made of money and will not now, or ever, spend that much money on curtains. Maybe someday I'll come up with some sort of hack?

But for now I have awesome colorblocked curtains! My mom went around their house and collected all the curtains they'd (she'd) stashed everywhere, and some pretty cool fabric yardage, and sent it all my way. (Thank you mom and dad!) To go with my "all things white" theme, I pulled out the one set of plain white curtains, and hung them on the curtain rod I very carefully had hung on the wall. (And I do mean carefully. There was a level involved.) Unfortunately, the curtains had been hemmed to hang over the radiator in my granmom's room, so. . . 

Not gonna work. So I went back to the pile of curtains on the guest bed and pulled out a pair of beige linen panels from when I lived in Austin. They weren't right either: I didn't like the hanging tabs, and I really did prefer the white curtains. So I texted my mom, arbiter of all things cool, and we went back and forth on what to do.

Finally, we/I settled on colorblocking the curtains. There was also a long discussion of optimum levels of scrunch when opened vs optimum levels of scrunch while closed. Luckily, I had two beige panels and four white panels. Even more luckily, I could get two "bottoms" from each set of beige panels, which meant I could essentially add length to all four white curtains. But two curtains on each side meant too much fabric to clear the side of the window when opened, so I cut one of the curtains in half vertically and stuck it on each end to cover the bracket and provide optimal levels of scrunch. 

So I did a bunch of measuring, and a bunch of sewing and remembered why I hate sewing curtains: it's really, really obvious if things aren't straight - but only once you hang them up. Its nearly impossible to tell before that point if things have gone well. But they did go well! The line of color blocking is visually even, and the hems seem to be straight and the right length.

(Yes, there is one curtain that is about an inch too long and I still want to see if I can't adjust the color line on one of the mini-panels and maybe also sew the mini panels to the main panels. Also perfect is the enemy of good and ALSO my curtains look fantastic, if I do say so myself. Super, super pleased. Plus, free! Actually the whole thing only cost me the cost of a box of drywall screws and anchors, a spool of white thread, and a spool of ecru thread to put these curtains up - the rods and brackets are also from my parents' house. So maybe $12 total. WIN.) <-- this brought to you by about the one thing I wish I hadn't inherited from my mom - my inability to say "here I did a thing!" and not immediately point out the flaws in what I have made. anything. was it a creative pursuit? let me tell you about all the ways I did not live up to my dreams.