Kevin’s mum Kath was visiting this week and while explaining to her why I couldn’t do this task myself, we kind of talked me round. Curtains are just straight lines after all so I dug out some crafty books and considered the task (thanks Kath!)
I had two layers of fabric, one plain sheeting and one floaty gauze – the idea of having floaty curtains but which do actually block the window. I measured the window and found that both were 74 inches high and were 56 and 44 inches across respectively. I do mean inches, our ceilings are 8 and a half feet high so most of our windows are taller than me! This of course makes curtains quite an undertaking, with 60 inch wide fabric and two curtains on the bigger window and one on the other, I had two 60 inch by 80 inch curtains and one 90 inch by 80 inch. By the time you have seamed edges and top, and attached curtain tape, that’s more than 30 yards of sewing and you need a LOT of floor to cut things out on. The wrestling was quite worth it though:
For reference, the curtains were quite easy to make (although they’re still unhemmed). The recipe goes something like:
- cut fabric, lay out with right sides together
- for the wider curtain, I joined half a width with a full width to get the size I needed
- pin and then stitch down outer edges
- pin and then stitch along the top
- turn right side out (like a duvet cover!)
- pin and then stitch corded curtain tape 5cm from top of curtain, along back
- hang curtains
- admire
Wonder how long til I get around to hemming them? My excuse is that curtains are supposed to hang for a while, to allow them to “drop” to their eventual length!