Craft No. 7: Living Room Curtains

So yesterday was a really bad day. You'd think sharing a bed with someone would make it really difficult to get up on the wrong side of it, but somehow I managed. It started around midnight when Nora came in from a romp, ate some Greenies (the only treats Snobcat deigns to eat), then promptly came into the bedroom and threw up on Bert’s dress shoes. For reals, mi gatito? About three hours of on-and-off sleep succeeded that episode and the rest of the day followed suit, including the craft-project-of-the-day: my living room curtains.

One of the things I really like about our apartment is its abundance of windows. We have ten altogether - a vast improvement over the old apartment's two - and the natural light is just amazing. Thankfully, most of them came with blinds – excepting the bathroom and the kitchen – so there’s been no crazy rush to put curtains up. Which is why my former bedroom/bathroom/kitchen curtains (aka "the multi-taskers") turned up again, this time in our living room. And stayed there. For months.

I absolutely love that tree fabric and would probably curtain the whole house in it if they still made it. (Dear Robert Kaufman, please bring back the tree fabric. Maybe in brown this time? Love, Sarah) But eventually I had to be honest with myself: the curtain style was just not cutting it. The panels weren't wide enough and the curtains were too long. See that “bunch” of fabric just laying around on the window sill, waiting to get covered in rainwater and dead bugs and everything else? Mmm, yeah. It was driving me nuts. Definitely had to go.

So I decided to make valences. I'd never made them before, but I figured, "Hey, they're smaller than curtains, so they'll be easier to make, right? And cheaper. Woohoo!" Cheaper, yes. Easier? Maybe if you know what you're doing. Which, of course, I didn't. (On strict principle, Mama V. doesn't sew. My ignorance is, of course, her fault. ;)

Choosing the fabric - usually the first problem to surmount on account of too many choices - wasn't a problem this time. I'd had my eye on this print for about two months now:

Because everything looks cooler with Apple products in the background...

The navy matches the rest of the living room. There's turquoise, there's stripes, there's a fun retro-mod vibe. It's like everything I could ever want and need in a fabric. Perfect. (Dear Jo-Ann Fabrics, Way to start making cool prints. Gold star for you! Love, Sarah)

We have two windows in our living room and they're both the same size. Wonderful. This project was getting easier and easier as I went. I measured, I cut, I sewed, and viola! I created this little monster:

And I was horribly disappointed. There are about ten things in this picture that I don't like, but let's stick with the four that actually pertain to the valance. It's too thin, it's too short, it's not wide enough, and it's too...blah. My awesome, Sarah-esque (Word of the Day!) fabric looked really wimpy up on the wall. I knew they might look better if I lined them, but I really wasn't too keen on that. I didn't want to screen out any natural light. I just wanted to hide the blinds and keep the windows from looking so naked. So I went back to the drawing board. For weeks. Of mismatched curtains driving me nuts. (I wasn't going to put the trees back up. That would be admitting defeat, which of course I never do.)

Then, inspiration struck! My friend J. made valances for her kitchen a few months ago and finished them off with a strip of contrasting fabric at the bottom. I thought a stripe of navy across the bottom might give the valances a bit more "punch," so I picked up a half a yard and gave it a whirl.

But the frustration continued. In order to sew the strip on, I had to rip out seams for an hour. Then I realized that about half of those seams could have stayed in. And that treating two pieces of fabric like one was a little more complicated than I expected it to be. (I'm new at this, okay? I miss the good ol' days of one fabric curtains.) But eventually - three episodes of Pawn Stars later (Don't judge. Netflix needs to add more American Pickers.) - I got it figured out:

And then I stared at it for awhile to decide if I liked it or not.

...

And I do. I wish it was a little wider so it'd be more "scrunchy" and I wish I made tabs for the top instead of just sewing it over, but it's alright. It'll do. Not bad for an extended first try. Live and learn.

So after suffering through the first valance, I thought number two would be a breeze. And it was. It went from cutting board to the window in about 30 minutes. And that's where I discovered it was about five inches longer than the first one. Wha...?!?! (Remember, by this point I'd been picking out seams for most of the afternoon. My patience was completely and utterly shot.) At first I thought the curtain rod hardware was installed at different heights, but when I pulled both valances down to compare, I realized that I had just measured the stripey fabric all wrong. Sigh. Back to the seam ripper I went...

But by the end of the day, I had two valances of comparable length that I kind of like. And a really bad mood. So bad, in fact, that I purposefully went outside in Sarah-melting-heat and ran three miles just for fun. That helped. Then Bert took me out for ice cream. That helped some more. Then I actually got a full night's sleep - wonder of wonders!

Lesson learned: Don't sew when you're tired. Who knew?

Next up: Cleaning off that bookshelf (and maybe putting photos in the frames ;). Anyone game?