Officially an Amateur

It's time!

That's curtain time, for the uninitiated. And my face says it all.

But having taken the edge off my nerves with my shower curtain repair, I was ready to at least make a start, one step at a time. So I laid out the fabric (very painstakingly chosen - seen here)

And then it was a matter of measuring it so that I could cut it into four panels.

I discovered that it's really hard to get a straight line across the fabric that actually looks like it's straight - so that each of those little teardrop shapes lines up perfectly with the next one.

Once each panel was cut (we cut them quite a bit longer than the length we actually need, just so we don't waste any of the fabric, and can potentially extend them and reuse them in a different room later on), I folded the edge of each long side over a few centimetres and ironed the fold to make it nice and crisp.

But before I was willing to attack the fabric with the sewing machine, I decided to have a practice run with my orange thread on an old pillowcase. Just to make sure I wouldn't totally ruin my fabric with awful stitching.

And then the dreaded moment came when I had to actually put needle to curtain (or future curtain).

This is my look of intense concentration.

And this was my first hem! Pretty embarassingly crooked I'm afraid, but thankfully the orange thread is almost identical in colour to the orange in the curtains, so it's pretty invisible.

I repeated that process with the other long edge, and then moved on to the bottom hem. I measured in 20cm from the bottom edge of the fabric, and then folded the fabric along that line.

And then I ironed that fold line so it was nice and crisp.

I did then also fold the edge back underneath (and even did an angled fold in the corner so it would look nice and neat from the front, with none of the hem peeking out around the edge), and then I ironed it too.

Then came the tedious-ness of repeating that process with the three remaining panels, leaving only the top edge of each one untouched. This was because I was missing one very important piece of information - how long my panels needed to be! As I mentioned in this post, we had to make a trip to IKEA to be able to buy some curtain ring clips, so I could then figure out exactly how much distance there would be from ring clip to floor.

First though, we had to actually install the brackets for the curtain rods.

And then the rods themselves. We discovered some time ago that the cheapest option for a curtain rod was at Bunnings. $20 for a simple extendable one that comes with brackets. They come with pretty unattractive scroll-like finials, but you can always swap them for something else.

Unfortunately the screws that come with the brackets always break, so we had to use some of our own, meaning they stand out a bit. A touch of trusty black nail polish fixes that problem, though!

So then came our IKEA trip and the acquisition of the long-awaited curtain ring clips, which I eagerly piled onto the rod.

And then I simply ran a tape measure from the floor up to where the fabric would sit in the clip, to determine exactly how long each curtain panel should be.

Four repetitive top hems later (with some measuring and re-measuring of lengths to ensure the curtains would just skim the floor), and then the grand unveiling (or veiling?) could happen!

This was a very big moment for me. I sewed curtains!

And thankfully the bottoms just skim the floor a tiny bit, just as I wanted them to!

When I was first planning curtains for this room, I had thought I would also put a panel on each side of the doorway (the one we built), but because there is very little space between that doorway and our shelves on the left, it wouldn't really work.

Plus, it might have been just a bit much orange in the room having the curtains spread around like that. I think the two panels either side of the big window are probably just enough colour, particularly since I bought a few orange folders to put in my shelves on the other side of the room (above).

The addition of the curtain now makes my gallery wall above my desk even more bright and cheerful (although still unfinished, as you can see - one step at a time).

I think I now officially call myself an amateur sewer. Can you believe I made curtains?!!!

Curtain Dithering

Way back in the dark ages (i.e. last year), you may recall that I was dithering over whether I should go for this colour scheme for my home office...

Or this colour scheme!

I fairly quickly came to the conclusion that I was drawn to the first option much more than the second, but I wasn't convinced that the curtain fabric I had included in that mood board was the right one for us.

Terrain Bloom Seedpod

So I searched for alternatives. And I couldn't find anything that fitted the perfect image in my head! I considered this...

Amy Butler Love Laminated Trumpet Flowers Pink

I quite liked the scale and IKAT pattern on this cushion, but obviously the colours were wrong, and I couldn't find the fabric anywhere, as it was.

Sourced here

And I trawled the online fabric stores searching for the perfect one. Without luck. So, beginning to feel hopeless with indecision, I finally decided to make up this three-page comparison of my shortlist options. Yes, I'm a dork. Get used to it.

They're all options from The Ribbon Retreat, Fabric Traders and Fabric.com.

I looked and looked, and got Tom to look and look, and even got Daniel to look (or at least take half a look), and we eventually decided that my very first choice, the Terrain Bloom Seedpod, was in fact the best option after all!

Terrain Bloom Seedpod

I decided to slap down the credit card and take the plunge. It turned out that they only had 10 and 3/4 yards available, at $10.50 US a yard (yes, they're based in the US, so we were talking yards), so I bought the whole lot. $112.88 plus $76.67 in shipping later (although that shipping included some other fabric that I'll talk about later, so it wasn't all for the curtains), and I had my curtain fabric ordered!

I must confess that even now I'm still not entirely certain about it, but for four decent quality, slightly longer than usual curtain panels they're not extraordinarily expensive. After my fabric had already arrived, I did find this fabric option on Ebay that's probably almost exactly what I was looking for originally...

Of course that price is enough to scare anyone away! Well, anyone that doesn't make their curtain rods out of solid 24 carat gold, I'm sure. And it's for 10.5 yards of fabric, slightly less than I ordered. Yikes!

Another thing I discovered only very recently too, is the existence of Spoonflower! It's a website where you can design your own fabric! They charge $16.20 per yard so it's a bit more expensive than what I paid for my seedpods, but considering that you can have one-of-a-kind fabric that's exactly what you want, all I can say is "damn"! Wish I'd found them earlier!

But never mind, it's definitely not the end of the world, and I think I am liking my seedpods. Here's a sneak peek of what's to come...

Won't it be nice to finally have office curtains!!!!

They Will Not Beat Me!

Machines are not our friends. We're doing our best to remember that since our most recent run-in with the Bobcat that Broke. And of course the long line of machines before that that tried to beat us. The precious paint sprayer, the possessed first digger, the second borrowed digger, the trilogy of concrete cutters and the pitiful concrete mixer to name a few.

But here's the problem. When they work, they make life so much easier!!!!

Last year, after we returned from our trip to Europe, I expressed a desire to get a sewing machine and to learn to sew. We found one for a good price online, and it arrived in record time. And then sat in its box for months.

Not only were we a bit busy building bathrooms, stairs and fences, giving me plenty of excuses to procrastinate, but the fact of the matter is that this sewing machine intimidated the hell out of me. Power drills? No problem! Cold showers? Sure. Climbing into muddy holes up to my shoulder? Yes please!

But a sewing machine? Scary!

Doesn't it look menacing? You can almost hear it growling at me.

And of course, given our history with machines in general, my intimidation at trying to figure out how to use it without spearing my finger with the needle was combined with a fair share of terror that something awful would go wrong and I'd somehow blow up the house.

But this weekend I conquered it!

I'll pause for your round of applause, here.

I decided to start with a project that's been long overdue. See our lovely shower curtains that we installed in our bathroom?

Well they don't have very much reinforcement around the holes where the curtain rings hook through, so with constant use, the rings holding up the curtain on the right (the one that gets opened and closed every time someone gets in or out of the shower) had ripped completely through most of the original holes. We tried to temporarily fix the problem by simply punching new holes in a different spot which worked for a while, but we had a very sad and sorry droopy shower curtain situation happening most of the time.

Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to actually take a photo of this droopiness, but here's a picture of the curtain on the other side that doesn't get as much use. You can see it's still straining on its curtain rings a bit too, so it may need attention in the future. One thing at a time, though!

I took myself off to Spotlight to see what I could find in the way of some kind of material to sew over the top section to give it a bit more strength. I wanted something that would be a little bit transparent so it didn't have too much visual weight at the top of the curtain, which is transparent itself. And I found this stuff! Sew-in Interfacing. It has just the right level of transparency, and seems quite strong.

I cut a section and folded it over a couple of times so that I could have doubled-over layers of the interfacing along the top of each side of the curtain.

Meanwhile, that sewing machine glared at me from across the table, just waiting to pounce on me when I dared to use it.

I decided to raid my stationery supplies for some bulldog clips to temporarily attach the interfacing to the curtain in favour of pinning, since I didn't like the idea of pushing pins through the plastic of the curtain. The clips didn't hold very strongly, but it was enough to at least keep the various pieces together until I could sew them together.

And then came the moment of truth! Time to set the machine lose!

And it wasn't too bad! Definitely nowhere even remotely close to perfect stitching, but it was doing the job ok!

 So I repeated with another line of stitching.

I'm definitely not going to win any awards for being able to sew straight, but I'm not going to complain. It's early days yet.

So once I had my rows of extremely wonky stitching, it was time to get to the question of punching holes for the curtain rings. In my trip to Spotlight I'd also invested in a little Eyelet Kit.

These are my kind of instructions. 1) Cut hole. 2) Insert & Punch Eyelet. Love it.

So I did! I found a hammer and a bit of scrap timber, and punched away!

And in no time, I had eyelets placed nicely along the top of my curtain.

Which, I must say, look pretty darn schmick! Please ignore the hole in the ceiling. We're still yet to get a light fitting to put there.

The interfacing's slight transparency is definitely a good thing. You can still kind of see the pattern on the shower curtain showing through in the light, which thankfully also makes my wonky lines of stitching almost invisible!

So I think we can say that round one goes to me! Sewing machine: 0.

We'll make a good housewife of me yet!