The early morning light has been bothering Chris, so I ordered some black out fabric to make curtains with. I found I could actually order ready made curtains for about the same price as the curtains, but only in boring solid colors – none of which I particularly liked. Hey ho, curtain making time it is!
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 |
 Pinch Pleat curtain tape |
Very nice your curtains, SJ, I really like the design you picked out.
Don’t know if you remember, but Mom made the long drapes in the living room by the double doors with black out fabric to block out the late afternoon sun from heating that room so much. I really like it a lot! The room doesn’t get anywhere near as warm and then you control the lighting you want in the room with lamps, etc.
You seem to be doing more seamstress projects, do you enjoy them?
Your plants on the window sill look good too!
Thanks, Dad. 🙂
Yes, Mom’s project is how I knew blackout fabric existed – thanks, Mom. 🙂
I don’t do that many sewing projects, really; mostly it’s just mending and altering. Every so often, though, I do something that seems only right to share. 😉 Mostly, I enjoy being able to make exactly what I want, rather than being beholden to what manufacturers want to produce. I enjoy the finished product; sometimes getting there is rather frustrating and time consuming (machine errors, human errors, set up and break down time, time to prepare the project – the sewing bit is really a teeny tiny part of the time spent on any project; there’s also designing, sourcing materials, ironing, pinning, cutting, etc). Thankfully, these curtains didn’t take too long to do. The curtains themselves took one day, and the tiebacks took part of another day. And, I’m quite happy with the results. 🙂