It's curtains for me!

[muninnhuginn]

I wrote in a letter to a friend this week, amongst oblique descriptions of the "remodelling" of the front of the house, that I'd characterise this year as the one in which I discovered the making of socks. To which accomplishment I may have to add curtains. With no Venetians to excecate, the front room was beginning to feel as private as a fish bowl. Net curtains--shudders--were becoming a necessity for at least the lower half of the windows. Or not. Even the ever-tasteful Robert Sayles' home furnishings department had hideous embroidered, scalloped, befrilled monstrosities. And the wrong size. The "café" ones were too short and the shortest length of the standard ones would have been way too long and would require shortening. Now, as a short-arse I'm used to buying off the peg and then pruning radically--every time I buy trousers. But doing this to ready-made curtains seemed ludicrous. I bit the bullet and bought the fabric by the metre and got out the sewing machine.

I bought voile in large green and gold checks. No nets. No grimy white. No machine embroidery. (I was briefly tempted by a solid purple, but resisted.) Home, I dithered for about three hours before putting scissors to selvedge (Knitting's safe: you can always unravel. Sewing's scary: you can't glue the pieces together again.) By nine, they were up. I'm feeling quite proud, almost proud enough to consider the lined floor-length replacements in cotton velvet or similar when we get some cash from the insurers.

Today, I taught Looby Loo how to use the sewing machine and an offcut from the curtains became a skirt for a Barbie princess. I don't think it's redeemed me in her eyes for refusing to buy her a "toy" sewing machine, but she did rather well.

Comments

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!

It's true, fabric doesn't solder worth a [tinker's] dam, but it does have redeeming qualities.

Your cafe curtains sound pretty, and velvet curtains to match sound grand ... you do know about prewashing (twice at least) to get any nasty shrinkage out of the way?

I'm delighted to hear that Looby Loo is sewing, too! I think that's about the age I got started on the machine.

[muninnhuginn]

you do know about prewashing (twice at least) to get any nasty shrinkage out of the way?

No, I didn't. Now I do. Thank u.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Delighted! It's a mission ~ not only to avert shrinkage, but to spare others the horror of seeing the lining and outer fabric (of whatever carefully constructed object) shrink in different rates and directions.