curtain progress

After sewing the lining in the curtain, you can see I had a few bulky layers where the top met the middle piece of the curtain.


The layers were visible at the edge of the curtain even from the front.


So I tucked it in and hand stitched the layers to the front.


Now the layers don't show on the edge of the curtain. Much cleaner. (Excuse the blurriness, I couldn't seem to hold the camera steady with one hand.)



I still have the lining to sew on the other blue curtain and I'm still waiting for my shipment of fabric for the bottom edge. But I'm still making progress...

Curtain Fabric out of stock

I have just found out that the curtain fabric I ordered is now out of stock :(

It's back to searching again.

The extra large pincushion

I keep dropping my pins on the carpet, so this morning before I started on the curtains I decided to whip up a little pin cushion. I used the purple from the ironing board cover for the sides and the top and bottom are "Crackle" in Eggplant by Kathy Schmitz for Moda.

The cushion ended up a little larger than I had originally anticipated, but then I decided that was probably for the best, considering that I had about 270 pearl headed floral pins left over from the wedding so I took them out of their little boxes and added them to the cushion too.

Now I can continue the curtains without dropping pins on the floor. And who else can say their pincushion matches their ironing board?

snapping in the curtain rings

I started with the dritz curtain rings which came with a template. I used a quilting pencil to trace the template.


Because I wanted the rings to be slightly lower than the ones on other curtains I had seen (pottery barn example) before, I pinned my measuring tape at the top of the fold and used the template upside down. The measuring tape helped me get the spacing between the grommet rings exactly right.


To put the rings in, I cut out the hole I had marked with the template.


I then slid the ring with the lip underneath. It matched up perfectly with the hole. After that I snapped the ring with the teeth onto it.


I love these two colors together. I had planned on going with a lighter blue, but when I saw this one in the store, I knew it just had to be. It goes so well with the nickel colored rings and curtain rod. When I brought it up to the counter for cutting the lady asked me what I was doing with it. "Curtains" I said. She responded "Well, that's a drab color." So here are my "drab" curtains. Would you call these drab?


The one problem I am having is with the corners, see how they droop. I think I will try some starch at the top. I really don't want to make it thicker by placing interfacing in it, because it will make it less transparent and I really want the light to come through the top. So, I'll try starch. If that doesn't work, I can try this. Transparent Buckram.


I am waiting for the fabric to come in for the bottom of the curtain. But while I wait I can sew in the back lining of the two panels and start on the bedroom curtains. Our apartment requires us to line our drapery in white so that the outside of the building looks uniform. I think the white lining will look great on these curtains.

I'm very excited about these, they are turning out quite well. It's the largest project I have ever done and it's going very well. Yea for the "drab" curtains!

Curtain Progress

This morning I marked where the grommets will go on one curtain top. I am debating with myself about whether I should put a thickener underneath them as the two layers of white are somewhat thin. I want the top of the curtain to be semi-transparent to let a little light in without causing a glare on the TV. So I'm not sure.


Next I cut out the blue and pinned and ironed the edges in.

That was about all I had time for this morning...it's off to work I go.

Curtain Top

Never know I would be so excited about curtains, but I am giddy about this curtain top and I've yet to sew anything together yet.

More on the curtains...

I had pretty much narrowed the running down to these two...

The first, by Faye Burgos for Marcus Brothers, I found available for purchase online, the second one by Lynn Studios for Robert Kaufman, I couldn't find anywhere. The Robert Kaufman website said that they sell his lines at Hancock Fabrics, but I looked through the entire store last night and didn't see this one. Since it's more difficult to find, I'll just go with the first one. Plus it has a similar feel to this lamp, which I love.

I love lamp.

Here is what I expect the curtains to look like...

I like the way the variation in the dot size and proximity to each other gives the curtain even more dimension.

Curtains!

My curtain rings came today!


Which is good because my windows are feeling quite naked. I found them at createforless.com much less expensive then the other places I was looking.

I have been planning out these curtains since we moved in. Got the idea from my good friend Laurie over at ranchredo.com

The top curtain (also seen in the sketch below) is the pattern for the windows, both in the living room and the bedroom. The second is the curtain which will cover the pantry in the kitchen area and the closet in the bedroom area.

In the bedroom the curtains will be red and black as seen below...


And in the living room, I'm going with a muted blue...

I've decided I would like to add a printed black to the living room curtains.. But I can't quite decide which print yet. I wanted a print that would still read as black, not gray or white. So here are a few I've found...

The curtain for the pantry (in the same room as the living room) will have a pink piping between the solid black fabric and the printed black border (The kitchen is an original 1948 pink kitchenette with black and chrome details) so I want to make sure the print looks good on both the blue curtains and the pink piped curtains....

Have an opinion? I'd love to hear it. I'm leaning toward one of these prints...What do you think?

Interesting problem

The maintenance team keeps coming and going from our apartment. So I've just been peeking into the bathroom every couple of hours to see their progress. All I reported was a slow drain. Now we've got this:
That can't be normal.

Fused Plastic Lunchbag

Etsy Labs posted a fused plastic bags tutorial back in May. Since we suddenly have an excess of plastic bags (I am trying to bring my own bags to the grocery store now) I thought I'd try out the tutorial. I started out with 8 plastic Target bags and cut off the handles and the bottom seam.I then cut them open so they lay flat across the ironing board (ink side in). I covered the plastic with a piece of interfacing and ironed the sheets together for about 20 minutes till they fused together and became one sheet.
I then cut that sheet up and sewed a fabulous lunchbag large enough to hold the square Ziploc containers I use to store all our leftovers. Makes packing lunch in the morning a breeze.

Thick walls

I figured we had thick walls since we can hardly hear a peep out of our neighbors, but today I got to see for myself just how thick they really are.

Our bathtub drain was slow when we moved in, so they opened up the wall to unclog it. Maybe I'm strange to enjoy looking into our walls, but I find it very interesting.

Yes that's two layer of brick between the neighbor and us. Our building is a 12 story brick building that was built in 1948. Our kitchen is still original to the building, well was until yesterday when the faucet started leaking, so now we have new faucets that totally don't match the vintage kitchen. I'll take pictures of that after I wash the dishes.

Kiwi Pear Snapple Metabolism

My new favorite drink. At only 20 calories for the bottle it tastes amazing. On the metabolism thing though, there's a little note that says 300 mg of EGCG per day (along with caffeine) effectively boots metabolism. Since there is only 55mg of EGCG in the bottle, you'd have to drink 6 bottles a day. In addition, I am pretty sensitive to caffeine I really shouldn't have more than 80mg in a day or I don't sleep well and well, let's just say I act a little loopy. This drink has 30 mg of caffeine per bottle so one bottle is pretty safe, a little less than my diet Pepsi.

Shop cards

After the trip to japan i made these washi paper kimonos. Since then they've been sitting in a box waiting for the perfect project. Tonight i made two little cards for the etsy shop with them. The cards are a cross between thank you cards and business cards.

[For some reason my phone's camera is now taking blurry pics. Maybe it's the lighting, maybe I need to clean the lens. Let's hope it gets better.]

Post it note flower

Post it note flower made from 6 post it notes and a few pieces of scotch tape.

[Apparently my phone is set to take low res photos right now. I'll fix that.]

You can find the pattern for the post it note flower here

Blue and lemongrass placemats

Lemongrass silk and a cool blue fabric are brought together in these colorblock placemats. $7each. Aestheticonion.etsy.com