Curtains!

The biggest project I've done lately has been my home made curtains.   A couple of years ago I made curtains for my bedroom at home with a LOT of help from Mum.   And apart from doing a couple of squares for a patchwork quilt for Mum when I was little, that's pretty much all the sewing machine experience I have.   So I was a little surprised when I got given a sewing machine a couple of Christmases ago.   Quite frankly I didn't think I'd even be able to get it here.   But in the Autumn Mum drove it up here for me, and bought me some fabric to make curtains for this room too, as the curtains I had were old, faded, cheap Ikea ones that were unbelievably thin and didn't close properly.   I was surprised at how much the fabric cost.   Over 300 pounds for the fabric, thermal lining, curtain tape and thread.  

                                                               Sewing machine

                                                                       Fabric

                                                                  Thermal Lining


So the first challenge was setting the sewing machine up.   This was done with the help of youtube.   The instruction manual was all in Italian, and while my Italian is pretty good, names of sewing machine parts is not my strong point.   Insert the something into the something and then do....something to something else.   Hmmmm.   Ok, so sewing machine all set up and ready to go.   The next step was cutting the fabric.   I had vague instructions from my mother about where to cut, but seeing as I am prone to brain farts I had a friend check it for me before I picked up the scissors.   She pointed out that I was Doing It Wrong.   Good thing I checked.  

So, with my fabric and lining cut, I just decided to crack on with my very limited experience, and see what happened.   First I pinned and sewed the widths of fabric together and sewed them.   so far so good.   Then I did the same for the lining.   The next step was sewing the fabric to the lining and hemming the sides.   Again, no disasters.   Next came sewing the curtain tape to the tops of the curtains and hemming them.   Well, this stuff was like no curtain tape i'd ever seen.   Youtube to the rescue again.   Before I could hang these curtains I bought a new curtain rail, and then got thoroughly confused by it and couldn't work out how to put it up.   Another friend to the rescue.   I owe him one!

I then inserted curtain hooks into the curtain tape and hung the curtains.   They were about a foot too long.   Being very lazy it took me a while to get round to ripping the excess fabric off the bottoms of the curtains and pinning them to hem.   Mum told me to hand sew the bottom hems, but I got bored very quickly and took the curtains down again to machine sew.  

                                                                The finished product!


What I learned from this project: 

- I am very bad at choosing curtain fabric.   They don't look at all like I thought they would.
- I hate sewing, whether by hand, or by machine.   I ended up doing this in stages over many days so that I didn't get too bored and grumpy.
- How to change a sewing machine needle (I broke four).
- I don't understand my sewing machine.   It keeps throwing tantrums at an alarming frequency.
- Curtains are much more complicated than they look!
- I can make curtains!   :)

I have to say it is very nice to finally have decent looking curtains that keep my room nice and warm.