3/7/10

How to make a pair of curtains in a weekend (give or take 6 months)

1. Immediately after arriving in your new home, ignore all the boxes and all the mess and spend your free time fantasizing about the Most Important task of all: making curtains for your daughters' bedrooms.
2. Browse the internet looking for ideas for weeks on end. Fall down an etsy-hole into fabric wonderland. Buy enough fabric samples to clothe a small army (of brightly colored flower people).
3. Borrow "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.
4. Fall in love with one of the gajillion fabric samples you bought. During Thanksgiving, enlist aunts and uncles to persuade Z it is her favorite fabric as well.
5. Spend a tense hour calculating hems and seam allowances. Use calculator on the sly. Order necessary fabric.
6. Receive fabric. Lay it over your desk chair rather than putting it away because you will surely be making those curtains ANY DAY NOW.

6. Holidays/Snowmaggedon/Arizona/American Idol/stack of New Yorkers/whohastimetomakecurtainsanyway??
7. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.
8. During one random "quiet time", sit down at desk/sewing table and stare at fabric. Suddenly remember spending an entire week sewing a "daisy chain" dress in college and winding up with one sleeve two inches longer than the other. Sweat. Walk away.
9. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from library.
10. Decide that you'd like to make some dress-up clothes for Z for her birthday. Which is suddenly next month (!?@!@#@#*$@!). Realize that the curtains come first.
11. Renew "Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from library.
12. Wake up and decide that TODAY IS THE DAY. Nap/quiet time WILL be spent measuring, pressing, cutting, and pinning.
13. (Realize that you might really enjoy sewing if it wasn't really just a whole lot of measuring, pressing, cutting and pinning.)
14. Baby who always naps DOESN'T NAP on the one day where there is motivation for curtain making. Give up all hope curtains will ever be made. Consider making the hanging fabric on your desk chair a permanent "loose slipcover".
15. When you can't get a sitter for a much needed date night, spend your Saturday night measuring, pressing, cutting and pinning.
16. Start sewing a long side seam, feeling fresh and optimistic. Everything is pinned and pressed and lined up as the machine hums happily along and you wonder why you didn't start this sooner IT'S SO EASY AND FUN until suddenly you've moved off your perfect line somehow and the fabric puckers just a bit and then you zag back which is probably the WRONG thing to do but it's too late YOU'VE DONE IT NOW and you just can't seem to sew a straight line or find an easy rhythm TO SAVE YOUR LIFE and then it all seems like yet another metaphor for your life and you want to give up and throw something heavy like oh say THIS SEWING MACHINE but by then your seam is done, for better or worse.
17. Sew a few more seams just like that.
18. Finally! After just a few feverish hours! You have two panels with side seams and a rod pocket (that's what she said)! Look around for someone to chest bump! Briefly consider waking up child to hang the curtain panels and gauge hem length (and possibly chest bump).
19. Wonder if child will wake up during a midnight curtain hanging.
20. Wait 'till the morning, barely.
21. Hang curtains and decide on hem length. Briefly consider leaving them unhemmed because there they are! Hung and almost done!
22. Hem them during video time, with small non-video watching child gnawing on thigh.
23. TA DA!!!


24. Order fabric for E's curtains.
25. Renew
"Even Morons Can Make Curtains!" book from the library.

13 comments:

Marianne said...

I love the fabric--it looks beautiful!

My mom once decided to make me a dress when I was little, and she finished in time for it to be the right size for my younger sister.

KG said...

Oh you are so cute! And so are the curtains! (You MADE your daisy chain dress?!?!)

Hillary said...

very cute -- and at least you finished them. I found the other day about five rows of the blanket I started crocheting for the boy THREE years ago.

clueless but hopeful mama said...

Ah yes, that should be "spent" not "spend". That'll teach me to not attempt posting a comment during breakfast!

B said...

Do you live inside of my head? I could not find the exact curtains I wanted for Lilah's room after months of looking everywhere and considered making them myself. But since I don't own or know how to operate a sewing machine that did not pan out. Those panels came out great!
PS: How the heck do you find time to blog so often?

Sarah said...

Impressive! I wanted to make drapes for the living room recently, spent some reflective time thinking about the four separate occasions when my mom tried and failed to teach me to sew, and then bought some panels from Penneys.
Know thyself, that's what I say.
Those are super cute curtains though, seriously.

Bird said...

They're beautiful! I love the fabric you (and Z.) chose! Nice work!

artemisia said...

They are so pretty!

Once The Thesis is finished (So! Soon!) I plan to make curtains for the house. Both summer and winter curtains,if you can believe it.

I wonder how long THAT will take?

Marie Green said...

I love them! I love the fabric! I wish I could make curtains... or anything for that matter...

Shelly said...

Gorgeous! I am impressed.

Kader said...

Hilarious! And, love the fabric. Can't wait to see the next ones!

Gina said...

Love the fabric! I once had to hem a skirt in college. It turned out so badly that my boyfriend (now husband) too pity on me and ripped out the hem and did it himself. I wonder what he'd think if I asked him to make curtains for the boys' room?

GratefulTwinMom said...

I have a post about sewing in the works too!!!! Your fabric is cute. There's a new, cool fabric store in So. Pas. that I'm going to check out today. Look for my project soon.... BTW, that fabric for Z's room goes great with the paint!

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