FREE LACE CURTAINS!!!!

Ruthy here!

My new/old spare room needed spritzing. Okay, wait, it needed way more than that, but I don't want to scare anyone right off.

This is the room that was filled with spiders and webs when lawyer boy came home in early November for Grandpa's funeral...

Clearly I needed to make a few changes.  :)

So I stripped off the old wallpaper. Patched. Sanded. Patched some more. Painted the ceiling. Then again. Taped the wood trim... then painted the walls (after I got all that stinkin' glue off.... Oh my stars...)

I wanted the beautiful oak moldings to become the highlight of the room. They were covered with acres of sheer curtains... And when I say acres, I'm not exaggerating hardly at all.

Maybe a smidge.

But look, here is the hardware on the various appendages of ONE WINDOW:

I wanted to go lace.... Missy loves lace, bein' Southern 'n' all, the Tex thinks lace is gracious and airy, and in Texas these are highly respected things, Jan is a home-maker of amazing skills so she was totally on board with lace, and the Fresh Pioneer said that she's fond of all things dainty and delicate and fragile and being the mother of boys has made her more so.

SO:

Dilemma.

There are not a lot of pretty lace curtains around these days.

Dilemma 2:

There is not a lot of lace curtain material to be found, even!!! (at JoAnn's they told me they hadn't carried it in years... so sad!)

So I lamented on Facebook   ;)

And got great replies and people searched the World Wide Web invented by that politician guy (soft sigh emitted) and then Kathy Brossoit of Arizona reminded me how much cheaper it would be to make them.....

A HUGE LIGHT BULB LIT UP IN MY HEAD!!! I loved the old curtains, but they covered up the pretty wood molding... So, Einstein, cut down the old curtains to fit the inner windows!!!!

Could it be done?  :)  Look and see:

 Here is the original 84" lace curtain.... Each window had two of these.... HUGE. (I was going through a dramatic lace phase, I guess. I do tend toward drama....) 

 Here's the valance.... so this was the EASY part, I flipped the curtain and cut off the valance, leaving about 3/4 inch of edge on the valance.

 Now I run it upstairs to SEE IF IT LOOKS STUPID!!!  I stole a tension rod from my window downstairs to test it out.... I hang the valance. Climb down. Step way back.

LOVE IT.

Suh-weet.

Okay. Now I can brave making the single panel.... but I have to measure first, figure out if I can fit two 

S-K-I-N-N-Y tension rods near each other... Old-fashioned deep windows... so yes, I can!

 I whack off 24 inches of the plain sheer top of the original curtain. (Most of this was under the valance)

Now I've got the cut work and 6 1/2 inches of plain sheer. Luckily the bottom of the curtain is scalloped and finished, so I don't have to hem anything. All I need is a rod pocket at the top and a gathered edge above it.

EASY PEASY!

 Trusty sewing kit...

 Very low-end model Kenmore sewing machine. I've had lots of machines over the years, but this is all I need now. Simple machine for simple needs. I've taught kids to sew on this (I stole it from Mandy, but she wasn't using it. Silly Mandy) We've made curtains, pillows and quilts.... 

I turned about a 1/4 inch under and stitched it to lock in the raw edge. Then I folded the 6 inches in half.  A few pins to lock this bad boy in place!

 Then I stitched the "folded edge" (just above the lacework) in a straight (mostly) line. I mean come on, who's going to notice when it's at the top of a window, gathered on a tension rod and under a valance?????

Then I ran a seam down the middle of the "fold"   That gave me a pocket for the rod... and a "gathered" top edge above the rod.

I love gathered edges. 

I'm very poetic that way.

So this pic came out dark. I took it SEVERAL TIMES and the camera kept making some silly adjustment.

WHATEVER, CAMERA.

WHATEVER.

But you can see how nice the single panel looks between the moldings, right????

 Here's a shot of the panel alone....

The crib is where one of my sweet babies sleeps at nap time....

What a nice room to wake up in, right????

 Ah, now you can see the crib!  :)  And the curtain with the valance. And the wardrobe my sister-in-law Bev gave me a long time ago because her house isn't friendly toward antiques. 

 And here's the view of the bed and one of the side windows.... How stinkin' sweet does that look? And these curtains cost me nothing but two hours of time to cut them down. And I still have three additional panels to use for something else. And the sheer strips I cut off will be used to dress Christmas angels or the Virgin Mary for a live Nativity... Nothing is wasted!  :)

Oh, here's the dark window. I don't know why it wouldn't take a good pic before, but that fun dresser in front? Found that on the roadside years ago. It was a fold down desk and I took off the broken fold down...  I finished the oak-veneer fronts in golden oak and painted the outside ivory and the inside teal green... then have a rose-trim around the top and between the drawers. Again: free... :)

I'm teaching my older girls at daycare how to paint things now. They're learning to sew... paint.... decorate... and bake, of course!  :)

Livin' on a dime has some very worthwhile advantages!

Huge thank yous to all of you who gave me ideas and websites! 

And now a cup of tea is in order.

Tea, anyone?