I made a curtain, part four: Big reveal!

Okay, okay. This is a loooonnnnggg time coming. What does that sidelight look like all dressed up and places to go? Here she is. Jonathan looks at it every week and says that I did an amazing job. Him saying that makes all my anxiety worth it.










Now we can walk around naked. If we want.

I made a curtain, part three

Deep breaths. I made the first cut. Into designer crazy amazing upholstery. And I had a plan. I would take a 30in. wide segment of fabric and then cut that in half again to fit the 14in. wide sidelight, covering the window so that the inside and the outside of the curtain was the same. This is a tall window that's highly visible to visitors as they walk up to the porch, so I wanted the pattern to be visible from the outside too. That was the final plan, but it took some getting there.



Initially I thought I would take a 30in. segment of the fabric for each side of the curtain, allowing for gathers. But once I started working with the fabric and the Heat N Bond, I realized that gathering the fabric would actually cover up the really cool oval design. When you pay $17/yard for fabric, you don't want to block the design. I also learned that although Heat N Bond is a really easy way to get around sewing, it wasn't going to hold everything on this thick fabric. Altering my plan actually made it easier to execute.



Once I had cut down my panels to size, I heated up my iron and got to work. I left room on the width to fold in the sides half an inch, and it turns out the pattern provided an excellent measuring tool in how far this would be: each oval was just folded in half. Neat and tidy. Once I had ironed down the Head N Bond tape to the backside of the fabric, it was peel and stick time.

Okay, it actually wasn't that easy, and this was my first time working with the stuff, so I enlisted Jonathan help in this step. While I ironed, he went ahead of me folding down the edge of fabric about to be ironed. This prevented me from having to stop and do it myself and keep the edges neatly folded. The first panel went without a hitch. It was on the second panel I ran into problems.

Apparently Heat N Bond can be temperature sensitive. You don't want to get your iron too hot, and alternatively, you don't want it too low. So I had couple inch sections here and there that didn't want to stay down. Once I researched the problem online, I made sure my iron was turned down.

Panels done, I got to the final part of my plan. Some actually sewing. I need to sew the two panels together so they could fit around the tension rods. Remembering my grade school sewing days, I faced the two panels together with the backside facing out, and marked 2.5in. in from the top. Because I still wasn't want to even sew that much, I did single stitches every inch or sew. Sewn, signed, and delivered, or more like, sewn, flipped right side out, and tension rods placed, it was time to give my foyer it's privacy curtain...

I made a curtain, part two

In part one, I rehashed how I came to decide to make my a curtain for that skinny foyer window, a.k.a. sidelight, and how I finally found the perfect fabric for it.

But let's back up: That fabric. That amazing Dwell Studio fabric is just that. Amazing=pricey. $35 a yard to be exact. Because it's actually an upholstery fabric and a name brand, it's more expensive than your everyday cotton pattern fabric. And after measuring the window, I determined I would need 3 yards, or $105. Someone grab me a chair, I'm gonna faint. Ouch. Here I was talking about not buying a ready-made sidelight curtain because of the price and I'm going to shell out $105 on 3 yards of fabric?! Actually, no. I'm not that insane or spoiled. It was Memorial Day weekend, and Jo-Ann's was having a half off sale. $17 yard it was. Still pricey, but considering that I was getting exactly what I wanted, it was worth the extra expense. And the bonus: The window was only 14 inches wide, so I would only end up using around 30 inches of fabric (front and back) to cover my window, leaving me with leftovers for other creative projects that I'm sure will be another post. So not only was I getting a fabric I loved for half the price, I was going to be able to use it again.



Oh, and I forgot to mention what else drove me to my decision: my husband. That's right, I dragged him along with me to Jo-Ann's. Ladies, feel free to do a swoon if your man refuses to enter a craft store. I won't say there wasn't any kicking and complaining, but he knew I couldn't make this decision on my own. So I patrolled and I contemplated, and I probably asked Jonathan a million times what he thought of this or that fabric. Until Holy Grail! I think I found it! The price left me crestfallen, and I was experiencing more than a little trepidation at the thought of handling such a fine fabric when my sewing days were somewhere back in 8th grade when I had to sew a plush football. But after some consultation with my sister, that honey of mine said, "Let's get it!" and stalked off to get our cut of fabric. Hy hero!

Like I mentioned, I don't own a sewing machine, so feeling inspired by Young House Love's no-sew curtains, I picked me up some Heat N Bond. When we returned home, I laid out the fabric on our guest bed in my craft room. What exactly had I gotten myself into? I'm about to cut a $100 worth of fabric. I'm no amateur seamstress. But I measured and measured and measured. And I thought and I thought and I thought. And I got to work. This curtain wasn't going to make itself, even if I thought at that price it should.

I made a curtain, part one

for my sidelight. I still can't believe it. Me, someone who is usually pretty quick to give up when a task seems too hard. First things first, what exactly is a sidelight and why does it need a curtain?



A sidelight is a long window next to the front door. There can be one on each side, and they may only run half the length of the door. We only have one, and it goes from floor to ceiling. Floor to ceiling. Not much for providing privacy. As the name implies, they do provide some light into our foyer, but not so much that we didn't want to leave it uncovered.

But how exactly to cover it? I had heard of those frosted privacy window film clings that you just cut to the size of the window. Light gets in but no peepers see in. Problem was our front door doesn't have a peep hole in case we should get a visitor, so we needed to still be able to see out of it. That left finding a sidelight curtain, which turns out harder and more expensive than was worth. Did I mention they are ugly sheer monstrosities with no style whatsoever? Not only were they expensive, they weren't what I wanted=not worth it.

That left only one option: I had to make a curtain. I didn't even have a sewing machine! No matter. I had the perfect no-sew inspiration from Young House Love's post. Combine that with the most perfect fabric on sale at Jo-Ann Fabric's. It's Dwell Studio's Cameo Ovals.