Recently, I saw a brilliant tutorial for striped curtains on Prudent Baby. My older son's room had been without curtains for months, but I was having such a hard time finding any I liked. I had been drooling over the gorgeous fabrics from fabricworm, but not willing to pay for 4 yards of fabric, plus shipping. Monaluna for Birch Circa 60 Beach Mod was just what I was looking for. The tutorial shows you how to use half yards of designer fabric and an inexpensive sheet to make your curtains and save money. I was not able to find a sheet in a color I liked, so I ended up using muslin, which cost more, but I had a coupon at Joann fabrics.
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| Sorry about the lighting. Was not able to use natural light. |
Jacinda's version had grommets, but I was not brave enough to try these. It was mostly because I didn't wanna have to buy better looking curtain rods. So I stuck with my standard 97 cent ones. Instead of the usual pocket that goes all the way across the curtain, I made tabs in the back, modeled after my favorite IKEA curtains. If I make these again, I will post a step-by-step tutorial. Here are Jacinda's
Striped Grommet Curtains.
While I was at it, I decided to reorganize Aiden's room. He has one of those beds with the built-in bookshelf, but his books are so thin, that they fall between the bed and the wall. So instead of fishing them out all the time, I decided to find a better way to store them. I put then in storage boxes where he could still reach them, on top of his toy bin. The toy bin is from IKEA.
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| Let's see how long this neatness lasts. |
I have always wanted to learn to make a quilt, but the thought of doing it all by hand was very daunting. So I decided to give machine quilting a whirl. And I also did a "cheater" quilt. I did not piece squares together like a traditional quilt. I used one large rectangular piece of fabric and just sewed a criss-cross design, by first sewing parallel lines in one direction, and then more parallel lines across the first set. I made my own bias tape from a great tutorial here and also learned how to bind it.
