Curtain mania

For the past almost year, I have been inspired by a friend here, named Lindsay to make my own curtains for my house. Previously I had just bought the cheap stuff from Target or Kmart just to have something up and they did not look good or follow a theme. Several years ago my mom made me curtians, actually Roman shades for our bedroom that were room darkening and would match our bedding. I really liked those but never thought I would make my own. Well, since Lindsay moved here about a year and a half ago, she's been making her own curtians for her house and is really gifted in sewing. She basically taught herself how to sew and so I thought, she's young and can learn how to do it, so can I! Especially if I had her help whenever I needed it. So I went to JoAnn fabrics last fall and bought my first book on how to make curtains. Then, I picked out which windows I wanted to do and picked out fabrics I liked. I got Lindsay's opinions about everything and then had Neil come and look to make sure he liked it as well. Lindsay helped me figure everything out so I would know how much fabric to buy.
I started with doing a cornice board over the sliding glass window in my kitchen. Before, it just had those blinds that you see but you could see where that was screwed into the wall and the top of it. So, I bought matching fabric for the cornice board and for a window treatment over my kitchen sink. It's a dark plum color with a pattern in it. One of the walls in my kitchen is plum so I wanted it to go with that. Below is the final product of both. My dad actually made the wood frame for the cornice and then my mom and I covered it.

This is the one that I kind of made up. I saw the idea in my curtian book and then went from there. I actually got finials that are supposed to go on the end of a curtian rod to hang it. I put button holes in the fabric where I wanted it to hang from. Neil rigged the finials so they would stick out from the wall for me. He's so good at coming up with stuff like that! Oh and I think it only cost about $50 to buy fabric for both of these windows!

These curtians I actually didn't make but I added all the extras to them. We bought them at Target, they were blackout curtians which we needed for our theater room upstairs. I'm glad we bought them because I was looking into making them and I needed three panels that would be 96" long and they needed to be thick material with a blackout lining. So, it would have cost quite a bit of money to make these. I bought all the trim, tassels, and cording needed for all three panels for $30 at JoAnn's. They have half off all their decorator fabrics and their trim and tassels every so often so that's how I got it. Then I just hotglued it on and it was done! It added a lot to the look of the curtains and now we have a way to tie them back when we're not watching a movie too.


Just a closer look at the trim.


I couldn't take a pic of the whole window, it was too bright.

These are Micah's curtains in his room. Again, I didn't make these, I had bought them for cheap at Target before I got into making curtains. They were just plain tab-top beige canvas curtains. But then I decided that I had some extra material from when my mom made Micah's quilt that I could add to the bottom and replace the tabs. So, that's what I did!

Here you can see how it matches his quilt.

This is is my latest project that my mom helped with about 3 weeks ago. The above is the before pic. The below is the after. I am so happy with how they turned out!

Here's a close-up of the fabric which I bought at the same time I bought the fabric for the kitchen. I did this because it matched well and I wanted to get it while they still had it. So, even though I did kitchen windows in the fall, I just did the family room windows a few weeks ago but had the fabric already. I think it was about $100 for this fabric and then about another $25 for the lining I put on them. You don't always have to do lining but they hang nicer, don't fade as easily and look professional. The rod is a double rod I bought over Christmas at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for like $20 on clearance and I already had the shears. I've had those up by themselves for the past several years and decided not to waste them.

So, anyway, those are some of the projects I've been doing lately. I've officially finished everything I had planned to do but I think the next project will be the spare bedroom/Micah's window when we move him to that room and figure out our theme for in there. Also, sometime I will need to redo the curtians in our room because we purchased new bedding this past Jan. and the Roman shades don't match anymore! But, those curtains will have to be like the family room curtains and so they will be expensive and time consuming so I'll wait a while to do those.