Making Curtains

Dude.  I totally made these curtains last week.

I know, I know.  I already told you that.  But now I'm going to tell you how I made them.  

First of all, I needed a sewing machine.  I didn't have one.  Wife took me out shopping last week, knowing that I'd been cruising Craigslist looking for a cheap, secondhand machine.  She walked me into Joann Fabrics and informed me that I would not be buying an old machine, but would in fact be getting a new one.  Mostly because I'm probably going to break it, so she thought I should get something warrantied.  Which is, admittedly, a really good idea.

I ended up with this one.

Not only does it come with a 10-year manufacturer's warranty, there's also a 1-year in-store warranty - which means that if (when) I break it, if it's been less than 1 year since I bought it, I can take it back to Joann's and the nice ladies at Mainely Sewing Machines will fix it for me.  Thank goodness.

We picked out some fabric that would make cute curtains for the bathroom and bedroom, since those rooms were the most urgently in need of curtains.  Really, it was urgent - if we didn't stand in the right spot in the bathroom to change, our neighbors could see us.  Which means that the neighbors have probably seen my boobies about a dozen times since we moved in, because I am forgetful.  Oops.

I spent some time cruising the Internet to figure out how in the world I would make these curtains.  I signed up for AllFreeSewing.com, to look at some patterns and tutorials.  And then I found one.  Suzannah at Adventures in Dressmaking broke everything down so clearly, I decided this was the tutorial I would use.

So I made all my measurements.  I carefully added in the half-inch foldovers for the hems,  THEN added in the width of my actual hem (because if you don't, apparently the raw edges will wear down and your hems will fall out, and you'll be left with a sad, sorry mess).  I cut and tore my fabric to get my edges straight; I carefully folded, pinned, pressed, and pinned again.  I had threaded my machine with a carefully-coordinated shade of teal green thread, so when the curtains finally were pinned into shape, I sat down, lined everything up - and started to sew.

And promptly jammed the machine.

Apparently, pinheads don't fit well under the sewing foot of the machine.  The result?  The hems on my first set of curtains are puckery and zig-zagged - not purposefully, like zig-zag stitching, but incidentally, since my first reaction was - I kid you not - to just swerve around the pins while sewing.

. . .

It's a damn good thing Wife loves me and thinks it's cute that I'm trying to reteach myself to sew.  I foresee lots more crooked sets of curtains in our future.

Learning to sew

My mother tried to teach me to sew when I was about 6 years old.  This is also around the time when she tried to teach me to knit, and to crochet.  None of these efforts were really successful, and I can't even remember whose idea it was for her to teach me these things, hers or mine.  But she tried nonetheless, in spite of my best efforts to thwart her.

Now, 20 years later, I really, really wish I'd been paying attention to her lessons.  I grew up wearing mittens, scarves, and the occasional sweater that my mother had knit for me, and dresses she had sewn herself on her little Singer.  The desire to be domestic didn't really kick in for me until I was about 18 and needed something to do with my spare time, other than read.  I had thought for years "Oh, I could knit if I wanted to," but promptly realized when I first attempted knitting that no, no I could NOT knit.  Thus began the painful process of reteaching myself the things my mother had first attempted over a decade earlier.

Sewing intimidated me the most.  With knitting and crocheting, all you have to worry about is a strand or two of yarn, and one or two needles.  Four, if you're feeling fancy and knit in the round.  (I am not fancy.)  It doesn't matter if you can't cut in a straight line, have poor eye-hand-foot coordination, or tend to stab yourself whenever you're near something sharp.  You just need to be able to count and make loops, really, and the yarn and needles to the rest.  But with sewing . . . well, let's just say that I lack a few fundamental life skills.  (See the rest of this paragraph.)

When Wife and I moved into a house, however, we found ourselves seriously lacking a few things.  One of those things was curtains.  There are about a dozen windows in our house - all different sizes, too - and we only had 3 curtains, none of which fit any of those damn windows.  I got it into my head that maybe, just maybe, it was time for me to learn to sew.

After all, how badly can you mess up a rectangle?

Not so bad for my first set, if I do say so myself.

The curtains could have gone way, way worse.  Thankfully, not only did they end up not sucking horribly, but Wife loves me enough to tell me repeatedly that they're really cute and they look awesome. She also told me, before I even tried to make them, that she'd be happy with whatever I made - even if that meant I tacked raw fabric up over the windows with thumbtacks.  Ah.  Nothing like setting a low bar for me to surpass.  

We'll see how long that bar stays low . . .