Impulse Curtains (and tablecloth and more curtains and a windowsill runner and oh look another curtain)

Two days ago was the first Saturday of the month, which--around here, at least--is "half off everything in the store" day at all the Goodwills.  I have recently taken back up with houseplants again, and had the idea I could go to the Goodwill that I hadn't gone to earlier in the week and grab some cache pots for cheap, and also maybe find a mirror to put behind the shelf recently installed in here to hold houseplants.

I did find a few cache pots, but no suitable mirrors.  And I also saw this

Marked $9.99, so $5, with indeterminately many yards rolled up in the tube, and with stripes in a nice watermelon-y pink color.  At first I scoffed, because what use would I have for so much interior decorating weight cloth?



...but then I remembered: the tablecloth that I made ages ago was...showing its age

Yes, that is the cloth that the old living room curtains had been made from, as well as the previous kitchen curtains (I seem not to have blogged the really fast curtains I made from madras to replace those), and the curtains still on the fake french doors near the dining room table.

I estimated that there was enough fabric on the roll to replace all of those things, so I grabbed it and took it, along with three cache pots, and stood in line for...easily a half hour.  (The half-off Saturday sale is a thing that I have to go to every few years to remind myself that it's not worth the time to go to more often.)  I was not leaving without my cloth and my pots.

After sorting out the cache pots and the clearance houseplants bought at Lowe's on the way home, I decided to go ahead and start making the tablecloth.

The first try, using the old tablecloth as a pattern, did not go well--I like the table cloth to be fitted, so, when the cats jump on it, it doesn't slide off, and things got shorted somewhere.  I had also forgotten that the leaf cloth (as an aside: it would be interesting to see a game board with hex-based movement that has a design something like that) was somewhat narrow, so the extension piece I had added when I made that was not necessary on the newly-acquired 62" wide striped cloth.  I didn't figure that out, though, until after I had ripped the striped cloth to the full length of the table cloth at the width of the leaf cloth, then ripped a bit of the striped cloth to the same size (almost) as the leaf cloth extension.

I consoled myself by realizing that there was enough length in the failed table cloth to make one of the curtain panels for the fake french door windows, so I didn't mind starting the table cloth over again.  The second time, I laid the cloth out on the table and measured the drop on each side to make sure it was even then started pinning things.  That time, it worked.

(making or acquiring new place mats will happen sometime, now that the forest elf cloth is gone.  maybe ironing will happen sometime, too.)

Before I could start the fake french door curtains (it's a fake french door because only one side opens), we had to install the curtain rods.  Now, yes, there were curtains hanging there before, but...uh...instead of a curtain rod, I had used the top of the mini blinds that had been there (and destroyed by a cat.)  It worked, but it wasn't...pretty.  It also lacked anything to hold each curtain at the bottom (the bottom of the mini blinds had been used...but, again: cat destruction.)  So we spent a cranky little while trying to figure out geometry and how to work with/around the holes from the mini blind hardware.

Once things were installed, I measured and made.  One of the curtains was a bit noticeably loose, so I cut the stitching and moved the pocket seam ¼" and things were a bit better--may or may not try changing it again sometime

They are hard to photograph.

When I measured the curtain rods and realized I'd need 28" width, which meant I could have gotten both curtains easily from the same width of cloth, but, nope, because I messed up the first tablecloth attempt I would now have to make these curtains from successive lengths, meaning the tablecloth + fake french door curtains would need nearly six yards instead of four...I was a bit miffed.

And that meant I had to get creative with the other two windows.  I measured things that were left and worked out where to cut for what and made the east window curtains first.  The east window used to have a roller blind (again...cat), and then I used fabric to replace the torn vinyl on that and make a still-functional roller blind, and then (when the sunlight destroyed the cheap thin cotton) replaced that with a single panel of fabric, still using the roller blind hardware in lieu of a curtain rod and with the wooden bit from the bottom of the roller blind in the bottom of the curtain so it would be easy to get out of the way when we put the window fan there on nice nights.  I feel like I've lost the proper structure of that sentence.

That window has to have a covering of some sort, though, because the morning sun in the summer can be brutal.  As long as I've lived here, that covering has been a single piece of something, and I would absolutely have installed another single piece of the striped cloth if I hadn't wasted the weird widths of it on the failed table cloth, so it took a bit of a mental flip to say...oh...oh, I can make two curtain panels.

The best I could do, though, was two 20" panels, which, in a 35" wide window doesn't give much width to gather

and also? I had forgotten how wide the roller blind tube was, and these curtains would not fit on that and I did not want to pick that stitch out and attach more fabric to make the rod pocket juuuussst a little wider.  This finally gave me a use, at least, for the tension rod that's been floating around here for a while.

...which...gave me an idea...

OK.

So.

In the room I'm in now, my craft/hobby/computer room, I have a tall window.  It is south-facing, so heavy blinds are used to control the amount of sunlight let in.  A while ago, though, one of the thrift store fabric grab bags had a complete single sheer curtain panel that was just the right size to cover this window (I suspect I should actually use two of them to get proper fullness, but, enh.)  So I hung that on the curtain rod that was left over in here from when this was Baby Kiddo's room, and I did indeed like the general softening that came from the curtain.

I did not, however, like the extra fabric over the rod pocket, or the tag clearly visible up there

or the really shallow hem

Now, in, I believe, the same thrift store fabric grab bag, there were a few yards of a textured sheer ivory, which I had, at one point, thought would become the new fake french door curtains,  That obviously hadn't happened, so I had this cloth to play around with again, and I decided, since I was in A Curtain Makin Mood, that I would use most of that to make a new curtain for in here.

Look--no extra ruffly bits!  No tag!

Nice deeeeeep hem!

For most of these curtains, I was using the Dritz EZY-Hem to press folds as needed

 but the 12" depth I wanted for this curtain was a bit beyond the capacity of this thing, so I cast about my room and ended up using a piece of cardboard

which worked fine!


Not visible: so much cat hair.

 If it had been long enough, I might have used that fabric to make two panels--the fact that it wasn't long enough, though, is why I went ahead and made this, because then the remaining length could be used for...

Another layer for the east window, whoo! Using the roller blind hardware as the curtain rod.

I added the tie-backs--closing with Velcro® brand hook and loop tape (not paid or affiliated, just salty that the genericization of the word Velcro means it's really hard to find non-Velcro-brand hook and loop tapes, specifically the ultralight weight low profile stuff that's good for doll clothes) so the curtains can still be closed on uncomfortably sunny summer mornings

and in the process accidentally made the platonic ideal children's drawing version of curtains.

That left only the north window, over the sink and where many plants live.  In terms of household thermoregulation, having a full and proper window covering there probably would be best.  Hadn't had one there before, and did I mention the plants? (those in the east window are only in for the winter.)  I figured, from the start, that I would be working with the dregs of the fabric roll for this window, and I was more right than I expected (have I mentioned the big mess-up with the first tablecloth and the subsequent waste of fabric to make the fake french door panels?  I have?)  But that was fine, because I've only ever made valances for this window.  And I had the idea that I wanted to make a curved valance this time, and I eked that out indeed

 I did have to piece the back of the rod pocket, because there just wasn't quite enough length left, and it hung even weirder than it does now before I sewed a line of stitching above the pocket rod area.

 And...see that perfect little narrow hem there?

That, and all other narrow hems in all of these projects, owes enormous thanks to the hem roller attachment

Flat goes in, hemmed comes out.  If I'd've had to've pressed all of those little narrow hems...just...no.

So!  I accomplished everything I wanted with that $5 roll of thrift store cloth!  And there are a lot of long narrow strips left.  If I do sew place mats, there's probably more than enough to use for the backs.  And there was also easily enough to make a new runner for the north kitchen windowsill, to hide the damage (done by plant pots/saucers/old CD-Rs used to protect the windowsill but oops they had things written on them with Sharpie and that pigment transferred to the windowsill paint and I do know how to bleach it back out but it needs direct sunlight which that window doesn't get so it's easier to cover it up) in the past and to prevent damage by plant pots in the future

The morning light in the kitchen/dining area was very weirdly pink today, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.