East Curtains

I had started with around four yards of the 58" wide secondhand heavyweight cream and espresso plaid (trying to think of a charitable way to say "brown and brown.")  The fabric had been in the stash for years, thinking it would be a...cape?  So it was a surprise when I recently realized I could use it for interior decorating purposes.  It was definitely interior decorating weight, and I suspected it was from the 1970s, if not earlier.  Pressing it with a hot iron yielded a smell that backed that idea up.

I knew that wouldn't be enough on its own to cover everything I wanted to cover, so I got into the stash and pulled out a heavier cotton chintz-type floral print (it's unglazed, so it's technically not chintz.)  There was three yards of 45" of that, which made a possibly more suitable amount of fabric for this project, but I wanted more to make sure. After poking through the stash more, I settled on what was left of the small floral poplin from another project where I (unexpectedly) also needed more fabric. That brought me to a bit over eight yards.  I threw in a twin size cotton sheet--bought ages ago to be potential backing for a quilt--to use as lining, and was  ready to start.

Because I was working with limited yardage, the first thing I did was cut the length needed for the door curtain panels, then use whatever was left to determine the design for the east window curtains...which I had to make first so I could be able to use whatever was left of the large floral print on the door panels.  I tried not to think too much about things.

I cut the plaid in half vertically, then cut pieces of the large floral at ten inches long by whatever the width of the plaid panels was, then cut pieces of the lining the same size as the large floral (well, OK, I ripped them instead of cutting.) 

I sewed the large floral pieces to the lining pieces, making sure to keep the floral print direction consistent--I wasn't going to be able to pattern match, but I was definitely going to keep the floral right-side-up.  I then hemmed the long edges of the floral/lining pieces, and also the edges of the plaid.  I sewed the floral/lining pieces to the plaid pieces using a burrito method, so the edges are still open

The sheet also has a plaid print, and it's visible through the large floral when the sun shines on it, and that's fine by me.

I really like these fabrics together.  I had almost talked myself out of using this large floral, because I liked it so much.  I knew I would never use it for clothes, because that ivory ground is far too pale for me--I hadn't used it in the years I'd already had it (thrift find, possibly in a grab bag), and I couldn't think of any other use for it, and the main reason I was balking at using it was because...what if I didn't like the way the curtains turned out?

Then I realized that I was more likely to like the way the curtains turned out if I, y'know, used fabric I liked.  Especially since I was somewhat ambivalent about the brown and brown plaid (the darker brown reads as black at a glance, but I know it's not.)

The east window gets the full force of the morning sun, but it's nice to be able to open the curtains at other times, so I wanted to make tiebacks. The last set of curtains I'd made for that window, I had attached the tiebacks to the curtains themselves. That didn't work out so well in the long run.

We happened to have a pack of Command hooks, so I put those up and made some quick strips of the small floral stretch poplin (the length was determined by what was leftover from using the poplin to make the rod pockets at the tops of these curtains) and put small grommets in the ends.

It's not perfect, but it works, it used what we already had, and it didn't require putting holes in the window frame.

I do still have the sheer panel up, that I made to go with the previous curtains. They're just nice.