The Trials Of Curtain Making.

It's been a day of heavy showers between spells of great warmth. I only hope this will be enough to damp down the tinder dry vegetation that has been such a fire risk for the countryside.

As it was too wet to work at the zoo I thought I would get to grips and finish the sitting room curtains. As usual things did not go quite to plan.

 

I've always made or at least altered curtains and to be fair they've got to be the easiest item of home sewing to do. Almost as easy as a simple cushion cover. 

Initially my thoughts were - cut 2 pieces of fabric, hem one, pin them together and cover the raw edges with the curtain header tape and sew 2 lines of stitching with the sewing machine. Yesterday I'd done the first steps and thought it wouldn't take long to finish off today.

That was before I decided to pin and press the sides of the muslin (which I'll probably hand sew), narrowly avoided disaster when I stabbed my finger with a pin and began to drip blood and right at the end when I went to trim the loose threads discovered a tangled mass of threads on the 'good' side of the curtain.

That sorted I hung the first curtain just to check I hadn't made any serious miscalculations and saw ..... that because the black-out fabric blocks the light the curtain is a very different white to the wall. More of a 'bright white' than a 'soft white' as light bulbs are described, or even very light grey.

I'm very aware of colours and this stood out a mile but what was I to do? The black-out fabric only comes in white or black and changing the white muslin for cream would be too yellow. Then I had an idea. Look carefully at the bottom right hand corner of the curtain. I pinned some cream muslin behind the white and Yay! it adds that little bit of warmth to the colour.

Off I went to order some cream muslin but even that wasn't without problems. Not many places had cream muslin, one was too narrow and the other took some sorting to get through the payment page. Hopefully once it arrives it won't take too long to finish the curtains though I will have to unpick the curtain headed tape from the first curtain (or maybe sew the new muslin below the tape).

 

Later I did some minimal gardening between showers when I topped up the pond from the water butt and pulled out a few errant montbretia from under a hydrangea.