Saturday 5 May 2012

Ribbon, pins and back breaking work

Choosing curtains I find to be very difficult.  Hemming them I find to be a nightmare.

Growing up we had sheers and then lace.  I have always loved the look of lace and had it in just about every window in this house.  Last year my dear brother told me to "get rid of the lace" and I thought maybe it was time.



I brought home 4 sets of drapes one day for the living room and didn't really like one pair.  I settled on the simple white ones from Ikea.  They are cheap and are super long, which is great because most curtains that are ready made are ready made too short.   Earlier this week my girlfriend was in town and she helped me hem the ones I had hanging in the dinning room.  It went pretty smoothly and she gave me some good pointers.

To save some money I decided I would add the cut off material to a pair I had in the bedroom and bring them down for the living room....crazy I know.
    
Well I didn't really know.... until I got into it.

I was pretty sure you were going to see where I joined the two together so I thought I would buy some ribbon to cover the seam.  Off to the fabric store, curtains in tow and finally a sales clerk who helped me lay out my fabric and also gave me a few pointers.  I decided on two ribbons per curtain for a more bold look.......again.....what was I thinking.   I'm no seamstress.  It takes everything I have to hem,  now you want to add not one ribbon but two....on each curtain....and it needs to be straight!

Home from the fabric store I immediately emptied the dinning room, table and all,  so that I could lay both curtains on the floor side by side.  I'm a visual person.

I pinned both pieces of ribbon to the curtains covering the seam of where I added the extra piece of material.  Oh and the seams are not in the same spot on each curtain.  This is actually quite funny.




Ok looks good, wow it can't be this easy, or can it?   Lets hang them up to see how it looks.

I should have known!  I just busted my back, on my hands and knees, bent over, pinning all this ribbon and it's way to close to the ground!

Maybe the first thing I should do is hem them, and I also realize,  you can't really see where I joined the two pieces.  (from a distance) Who is going to look that close anyway?  I took off the ribbon and pined one side of the curtain for it to just touch the floor and worked my way through the two panels. 

Next was the ribbon, back on my hands and knees bent over pinning and measuring over and over again.  Then I hung them back up to make sure that they were evenly spaced apart and that they ran from one curtain to the next at the same height.  Phew! They did.  Now I just had to make sure that when I took the pins out and ran the tape under the ribbon and then ironed them, they stayed even.

AND THEY DID!  I think they look awesome and worth all the work.


The left side is a little longer, I will have to adjust the rod.
Notice my pillow from Dear Lillie


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