Blackout fabric is weird stuff. From wikipedia:

[Making it] involves coating a fabric with layers of foam, or ‘passes’. A ‘2-pass’ blackout is produced by applying two passes of foam to a fabric – first, a black layer is applied to the fabric, then a white or light-colored layer is applied on top of the black.

There’s also a 3-pass one with three layers of alternating colors of foam. It’s really weird stuff to sew, but thankfully my machine managed just fine. If you ever get the chance to grope some in a shop (and you’re into that sort of thing), I highly advise it, just for the novelty.

Anyway, last week I finally got around to making the curtains – and boy do they block out SO much more light! 🙂 Success!

Yesterday a friend came over for our occasional crafting morning, and I made tiebacks for the new curtains:

I’m really glad these were short curtains – they were far too large for our table space, and took all the floor space I could clear just to mark out one curtain at a time. They make this curtain tape I’ve not seen in the US (but then, I didn’t really pay attention to curtains very much there), which makes it dead easy: I just marked the lines, cut, hemmed all four sides, and then sewed this tape across the top. You pull the strings in it to make the top ruffled, and you attach these hooks that in turn attach to the curtain rings. I really hate dealing with the curtain tape (pulling the strings and attaching the hooks), so Chris got to do that part.

Curtain tape with hooks – from another old curtain I have laying around, which apparently needs a wash before I do anything with it!

Now that I’ve looked to find a link for you about curtain tape, I see they also make posh ones with fancy other designs – I had no idea. Gah. Well, it’s easy to unpick and replace that curtain tape – perhaps I’ll do it one day, if I get bored with these curtains.

Goblet Pleat curtain tape Image from Terry’s Fabrics

Pinch Pleat curtain tape Image from Terry’s Fabrics