Cover That Up!

I know that it would be a lot easier to just get dressed in the bathroom. Yet I still find myself early in the morning digging through the dryer for items. Someone lazy enough to not get the laundry put away, should suddenly decide to walk up the stairs change and then return back down the stairs to deposit the dirty clothes? Uh yeah.

Unfortunately every choice has a consequence. Mine is that I need curtains on my basement windows. Previous owners had tacked up mismatching pillow shams with a couple of nails. I removed all of them during some recent work. And had even hung curtain rods. Then I stalled for a bit.

The fabric that I liked the most wasn't in my budget, and like I said I really couldn't wait any longer for a cheap solution. Then I read this and the light went on. I have some plain white fabric that could be reused. This basement has become the mother of all reuse projects. The fabric had previously been used as fitted sheets, then used as drop clothes, and finally as curtains.

I'll be the first to tell you that they seem a bit granny to, and I'll still probably jazz them up like my inspiration, but for now the windows are covered, light can still come in, and I can continue to wait a few days to put away laundry. Seems like a win-win to me!

Here's how it went down.

I started by finding 3 that where the whitest and cleanest, then washing them with bleach. I then folded the fitted sheets to make them lay flat while I cut them.

I removed the elastic on the first one, then decided that it didn't make any difference so tried cutting the seem at the sheet corners.

That didn't make any difference in how flat it layed either. Folding was the most important step. If you don't know how to properly fold a fitted sheet watch this. (I read this in her magazine when I was just a kid. Oops, sorry there's that crazy OCD popping back up.)

This left me with a large rectangle that had 2 finished edges and 2 raw edges. To finish the raw edges I started by ironing a hem. When my mom first taught me to sew, she insisted I use a ton of needles to hold everything in place. Yuck. When it comes to hemming, I find that extra time spent ironing eliminates the need for needles and gives me a nice uniform edge. I first folded the material 1/2 inch and ironed, then folded another 1 inch and ironed. This would be the bottom of my curtain.

I then folded the newly hemmed sides together to determine the middle line. I cut along that line. Then folded that raw edge as the top. For the top my second fold was 2 inches to allow for enough space for the curtain rod to pass through. Then I stitched using my fold lines as a guide. My sewing room isn't really that dark. The combo of white fabric and the task light on the machine, made it really hard to take a close up photo.

 

Ironing was the most tedious of the jobs. I set up in the living room so that I could watch a movie with the family as I worked. This made the time fly by.

 

 

I then hung them on the rods and stepped back to admire my work.

 

 

I realize they are very plain and more than a little old lady. I will fix that in the future sometime. For now I am just glad to have the windows covered.