Friday, August 12, 2011

Curtains Part II: Kitchen

We have big plans for the kitchen down the road, but for now the kitchen works and we are focusing on making it the best it can be in its current state. The past couple of days I have been working on making this better:


In Fl it is really important to have window treatments since with the light comes a lot of heat. We have windows that are supposed to decrease some of the heat from the sun, but even with those, there is still a lot of heat coming in. On most of our windows we have wooden slat blinds or plantation shutters so we can block almost all of the light. This really helps cut down on cooling costs.

 As you can see, we decided to not to put shades in the kitchen. This is because this is currently the only window in the kitchen and I wanted something that would let through more light than the shades so it wouldn't get too dark in there, but would block some of the heat.

While in ME, I picked up some fabric to make a curtain. Here is how I put it together.

Step 1: Hem edges. I had gotten 1 yard of fabric which is exactly what I needed so I didn't have to cut the fabric down to size. I used Stitch Witchery to hem the edges and so on three sides I folded the edges just to cover the stitch witchery. On the forth, the top, side I folded enough over so that I could put the curtain on a tension rod.

Place fabric face down

Fold over the Stitch Witchery

Place a damp cloth on top of your seam

Iron both sides for 10 sec

Here it is all hemmed.

Step 2: I wanted to make a balloon curtain so the next step was the gather the curtain in two places to create the "balloon" look.


Here it is hanging in our kitchen. I basically didn't like it from the minute I hung it up. The center looked awkward to me and the sides looked like pigtails. I did let it hang for the rest of the day and most of today, but I still really didn't like it so down it came.

Step 3: To fix the issue I decided to gather the curtain closer to the edges and to gather it in a different way. I have other balloon curtains that have loops on the back that get gathered together and so I decided to mimic that. I decided to use my left over jute rope since it was lying around. I marked out where I wanted the loops, tied a whole bunch and sewed them on.


I then gathered the loops up and hung it up for a second try.


I like this a lot better (please excuse the messy kitchen). I also like that the way the window is placed, I can see out of it even with the curtain covering as much as it does. Also, you can see, the curtain lets light through so I don't lose light. 

This project cost me:

Fabric: $3.50
Tension rod: $2.50
Stitch Witchery: $2.99 (I used basically none of it but it will get used!)
Jute Rope: Nothing: already had it
Sewing supplies: Nothing: already had it

Total: $8.99

Stay tuned for pics of the rest of the kitchen and our makeover plans.

No comments:

Post a Comment