Wednesday, April 02, 2014

It's SEW easy ... Ha!

After a whole month...yes, a whole month...I am finally finished sewing Iris' bedroom curtains!  You didn't know I was even sewing any for her room, did you?  I painted her room last summer to transition the room from being the baby nursery to the little sister room and the color combination changed from bold green walls with white stripes and orange polka dots to a light turquoise with lavender stripes and various coordinating accents.  Well, let me tell you, the painting was the easiest because the coordinating accents have proven to be incredibly difficult!  One awesome thing we did was convert a dresser to a bookshelf for her and we painted it the same lavender that's on the walls so that really helps the turquoise pop and balances the blue of the room with the lavender stripes.  I found the idea on Pinterest (surprise, right) and Book did all the hard work to convert it.  It definitely was not as easy a project as a lot of pinners make it look.  Dang, I just looked for pics and can't find any.  I know Book has a bunch so I'll write another post about that project later. 

Anyhoo, back to the curtains.  I was searching, searching, searching for the "perfect" fabric for her and just kept finding the wrong things.  I was really frustrated because finding B3's curtain fabric was so easy!  It took me a long time to finally admit that I was quite possibly searching for a "perfect" that did not really exist for 2 reasons: 1) it had to have a lavender background and lavender is not a "hot" color right now and 2) Iris is very back & forth & up & down & all around regarding things she likes at any given time.  Oy.  Once I accepted I was not going to find "perfect" fabric, my search was made easier and I pretty quickly decided on one of my "fall-back" fabrics that I had identified as a potential winner over the summer.  Here it is:

Now, I just have to tell you that I've sewed several sets of curtains at this point.  I've sewn the dining room valances and I also B3s curtains for his room.  Curtains are easy.  Just a series of straight lines and ironing and such.  Easy.  Unless you mess up like I did.  I was incredibly frustrated with myself for making this project difficult.  First, I measured incorrectly.  Yes, you read that right.  I broke the cardinal rule of cutting - I only measured once!  Luckily, my mistake wasn't so terrible that it couldn't be accommodated with some design changes because I cut the panels only slightly too short (and not as wide as I initially intended but they still turned out all right). Second, I was working only during Iris' naps and a bit here and there after dinner and the little snatches of time versus just spending 1 or 2 blocks of time on the project caused me to make mistakes due to rushing or being tired or whatever the case was.  I ripped out a lot of stitches which I'm embarrassed to admit.  The design initially had me making 4 simple rectangular panels but since I cut the length too short, I ended up adding a 3 inch ruffle to the bottoms.  This mistake turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the ruffle actually makes the curtains super cute and definitely feminine.  Although, since I'm confessing here, I hate sewing ruffles!  They're easy in theory but take a lot of time and patience to execute and my machine hates them!  I'm serious.  My sewing machine does not like any bulky fabric bits!  Grrr. 

A few things to note: the stripes don't have anything in them yet because I have not yet decided what to put in them - thinking about bunnies and butterflies but not totally committed yet, you can see a corner of the dresser Book turned into a bookshelf, the coat rack in the corner is currently Iris' closet because we have some funky closets in this house (1940!) that we are still puzzling over how to reconfigure to accommodate the kids.  In short, the room is taking shape but very slowly.

Ok, so the big reveal!
BEFORE (with funky lighting, hmm)



AFTER
AFTER (other window in room - no before pic)

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