I have finished shoving most of my earthly belongings into the new bedroom (pictures up soon!) and am pretty pleased with the arrangement of furniture, and how surprisingly neat everything looks, despite the usual chaos of moving. I anticipate being very productive in this room, as I have evicted my television, and the HD-TiVo-Guitar Hero-Wii-plasma screen tv getup in the living room is far too complicated for my poor humanities brain to handle.
My only problem is that my work desk faces the window, and in the afternoon, the window floods the room with eye-piercing sunshine. I tend to do a lot of work in the afternoon (truly: a lot of time wasting on facebook), and although there are blinds, there are still blinding slits of light that still slide through. So I have decided that I must have curtains.
There are some cutesy things on the target and urban outfitter websites, but they tend to be either too sheer to fend off the afternoon sun or way too hideously stiff/faux rococo for my tastes. Or too expensive. Therefore I am contemplating the construction of my own curtains. My question is: how would I go about accomplishing such a task? My sewing skills are decent if rusty, having worked at the college costume shop sewing corsets and lace for 2 years. But I am not sure about where I can find the supplies and if I wouldn’t be better off just spending $40 on some beige curtain kit at target.
I have 2 weeks, so time is not really an issue (I think). Any crafties out there? help!
If you could rig up some kind of rod to hang above the blinds (or even under them), you could just fold over the top of a big piece of canvas or some other opaque fabric, sew it down, and maneuver it over the rod to make a simple curtain — you know, like a shower curtain, the kind that doesn’t have rings. I don’t know how attractive this would be but it would take care of the piercing-light problem; we found $10 canvas window shades at a yard sale and they keep out the light very nicely in our bedroom!
Or there’s always this: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2008/03/how_to_make_a_curtain.html
Comment by lisa — September 4, 2008 @ 4:45 pm |
hm, very interesting. It’s tempting to go all martha stewart on this project, but of course all that is really needed is to stop the light from coming in. THanks.
Comment by apricot — September 5, 2008 @ 9:34 am |
Linens and Things sells a lot of nice, non-ugly, light-blocking curtains — that’s where I got mine for my first apartment. Otherwise Lisa’s suggestion for how to sew the curtains is very easy, and think of the fun you’d have picking out awesome fabrics!
Comment by Lindy — September 6, 2008 @ 6:18 am |
I may have to visit Linens n’ Things. I did some quick shopping the other day and picked up some cheap $6 curtains, but they are a bit too sheer, I think. And the rest of the store only had fairly severe, heavy damask type fabrics.
Comment by apricot — September 7, 2008 @ 1:16 pm |