SOS: Curtains.

November 4, 2010

The saga of the apartment revamp goes on. Yesterday, it was happening in the nursery/office. Although we live in a basement, it is a nice basement, with large windows that make it feel like it’s not a basement…larger windows than I thought. Larger than 2 1/2 yards of fabric would cover. *Sigh* It was only my second time buying fabric. The first time I just went to the clearance section and bought what was left on a bolt, which ended up being way too much fabric. I think I need a lesson on buying fabric.

So, yesterday, I mentioned that Greta and I took a trip to Ikea. (Being only 15 minutes away from Ikea is bliss.) Greta’s room needed some curtains. Fun ones. Colorful ones. Chris and I both agreed that the brown, sage and white was getting yawn-inspiring. I mean, we already had to take down the cutesy mobile and remove the crib skirt. Now, I am considering just painting over my little deer and refreshing the whole look.

Reference photo

See that piece of a window? It’s actually about 60″ wide and there is another window the same size across the room. Windows without curtains look cold and yesterday, I set out to remedy that. I found really cute fabric:

Adorable, right? I thought it would add color and whimsey and could still work with her bedding, plus open up a lot more options for colorful frames and art. I brought the measurements for the windows in the room with me. I looked at the fabric. Measured it. Looked at it some more. Picked up the scissors, put them down. Unrolled it some more. Finally, I found a girl in a yellow Ikea shirt and asked for some assistance. She looked at my measurements and told me that the 2.5 yards should be plenty. Oh my gosh! She was so wrong! I can’t even cover one window! The only explanation I can come up with is she thought I could use the fabric horizontally??:

Okay, clearly that doesn’t look right. Even Chris said that that doesn’t look right (yes, I tried it). I could not go to sleep last night because I was SURE there has to be a way that I could make this work. Ikea doesn’t accept returns of already cut fabric. I paid $20, so now I really have to make this work. I don’t have a sewing machine (DIY no-sew curtains here) and I would love to not have to fork out $40 for fabric. Tell me there is another way!

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Ryan and Meagan says:
November 4, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Are you trying to do two panels instead of a curtain like at the top 1/3rd all the way across?? Know what I mean? I call it a tube curtain where you make a tube (naturally) and then just shove it all on the rod so it has a bunching and overlapping effect….buuuut you need a sewing machine for that one. That’s about as skilled as I get when it comes to curtains!
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Ashlee Peterson says:
November 4, 2010 at 10:34 am
Once I had a piece of fabric that I found on the remnants table. I LOVED it but it was too small to use for anything. So I went to Walmart and bought a cheap coordinating plain color (in this case beige) and put strips of it all around the piece that I liked. That way it framed the colorful fabric in the plain fabric. It wasn’t expensive and I think it made it more dramatic. You could try that with white or black or even the green or red that is in this fabric.
And that salesperson was a moron. You always have to figure in EXTRA with curtains and drapes.
Where you don’t have a sewing machine you may be able to use that iron-on tape stuff and kind of glue the pieces together. I’m most certainly NOT a sewing expert though!
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