Isn't it funny how one project can spawn another?

So I updated the blinds in the living room {HERE} and then I decided that there was just too much white going on with those windows, and I needed to tone that down.

But what to do?

Well, obviously, I was going to add some color, but what color? And how?

The how was actually pretty easy, because I knew I wanted something natural feeling and I spied an indigo dyed wall hanging at Target and it was instant love. That is what I wanted to emulate for my curtains. A quick google search revealed that shibori style dying would be just the ticket. For those that don't know, shibori is the Japanese method of resist dying for fabric. I wasn't going to be using a wood block in my project, cause I'm lazy like that, but I did love the geometric lines and symmetry to some of the shibori dying techniques.

So after a quick trip to Ikea (love Ikea!) to fetch some white 108" curtains, and then realizing that I bought the wrong white curtains. I had bought tab-top curtains, and I wanted traditional rod-pocket curtains. No biggie! A trip to my sewing machine and I stitched those tabs to the back of the curtain and voila! I have some rod-pocket curtains now.

Now it was time to agonize over what color to dye said curtains. After some (ha!) back and forth over colors, I decided that a pretty primrose yellow would be just the thing for the living room.

I apologize for the lack of pictures here. Hopefully, you guys can visualize what I'm talking about here.

Now in order for me to have the loosely geometric line effect, I needed to fold the curtains a specific way. I would basically fold my curtain like you would the flag. In my research, I failed to notice just how they folded the fabric on the diagonal. This would come into play later. I placed 3 rubber bands loosely around each side of my triangles.

So I mixed up my dye bath following the directions on RIT's website {Primrose Yellow}, and then put my curtains into the bath for 30 minutes or so.

I pulled out my curtains, and I was in love. Then I rinsed them, and I was not so in love anymore. While the color had been what I wanted, my folding technique had thwarted my dying process. Only the top of my curtain was really dyed, and the yellow was not a pleasant one.

Determined not to be thwarted, I hung up the curtain and it became abundantly apparent that I had screwed up. The hubs came home and was very kind in his opinion about the newly dyed curtains. I told him they looked like pee, and I was going to redo them. He did not argue with my assessment of them.

Ok, so what went wrong? First, was my color choice. The yellow was not strong enough, and after seeing the yellow curtains against the strong green of the room, it just wasn't going to work. I needed a color that would hold its own against the greens, purples, and reds in the room. Hmmm, what color would work with those colors? The color in the room is Grape Leaf by Behr, and the rest of the colors I've picked are similar to grapes......  You see where I'm going with this? I needed a nice raisin color. Clearly, my room was speaking to me. RIT's website came to the rescue again and I decided on Tawny Port. See it {HERE}.

So now that the color was decided on, I needed to examine my folding technique. When you fold a flag, you wrap it up in itself in a series of diagonal folds, and that's where my problem was. The dye couldn't penetrate all those wrapped layers. If I wanted the edges of my curtains to receive the most dye, I needed all the folded edges exposed, so rather than wrapping the diagonal folds, I needed to accordion fold them. & Then We Tried has a great post about shibori folding techniques {HERE}.

So now that I knew how I'd screwed up, it was time for take 2. I mixed up another batch of dye. This one definitely looked like a witch's brew.

I folded my curtains like the flag again, then I refolded them the way I needed to. Sometimes I'm a slow learner. Then into the bath, the curtains went. They hung out for about 45 minutes.

Note, I didn't bleach the yellow out of my curtains. I put them in the new dye bath as they were, and said a prayer that it'd all work out. I'm a crazy hippie that way.

Luckily, I was not destined to fail a 2nd time. After rinsing the curtains, I was so in love with them! They turned out exactly as I envisioned. Into the washing machine with a healthy dose of vinegar was the next step. Then into the dryer until they were mostly dry.

While the curtains were doing their thing in the laundry room, I started hanging up the new curtain hardware. I screwed up again. I only bought enough hardware for one bloody curtain. Of course! Argh!
Well, my one curtain looked super nice hanging up by its lonesome for about 2 weeks, before I got back out to Ikea to buy more hardware, but once I got the 2nd one hung it was totally worth the wait.


 I love my new curtains, but I now I need to attend to some touch-ups on those walls.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

So when you think of divisions its usually between football teams, college ball teams, or math equations. And you'd be correct. All of those have or include divisions.

But in my house we have divisions in opinion. We also have divisions in healthy vs. unhealthy. Let's start on the opinions first.

I put up altered curtains and I'm not sure I like them. All the men in my house like them, but now lets  look at the 2nd division in the house - healthy vs. unhealthy. All of the men in my house are sick. The boys are in the throws of pneumonia and Steve is ill too, nothing definitive on what he has, but he's on two different meds to treat his symptoms. So in a house where I'm out numbered in everything, usually I get final say in decorating.

But all of the sick men decided they like my new curtains and I'm wrong because I don't like them, even though my argument is I'm not sick and therefore thinking more clearly. That did not hold any water. I'm now thinking of going with the argument, I'm the only healthy one in this house and if you want a pleasant recovery then you'll stop arguing with me about the curtains that I altered and put up.

I like the ring of the next argument! Don't you? Anyways, enough of my bitching even though I am bitter about being the only healthy one. Do you know how much whining goes on in a whole full of sick men? I should win  some type of award. Really I should. Or I'm going to move in with Mom for a few days.

So anyways, here are the pictures.




Here's what was there

I love that these curtains are so much brighter and  lighter. The curtains are from Ikea and they have a linen look. I was going to tell you how I made them, but since I'm not in love with them. I don't think I am. I think I will eventually take them down (when I get bothered by them enough) and then alter them again and then I will share what I did. Unless you guys like them and think I should share what I did.

I'm going to go pick up some prescriptions now - gotta get this house healthy!

So today I'm going to share how I altered my tab top curtains to back tab curtains. You can see the finished product hanging here.


This may be the simplest curtain alteration - ever.

Seriously. Someone with no sewing experience could do this.

So lets get started.

Obv you need to have a tab top curtain.

I ironed my curtain so that everything would be nice, crisp and flat.

What we're going to do is fold the tabbed portions back underneath the curtain header and then stitch them down. Now where you stitch is up to you and the width of your curtain rod. My curtains rods are teeny so I was able to stitch in the ditch of the existing header so you can't even see my new stitches.

Here's me folding the first tab to the backside of the curtain.

You can't really see it, but I am stitching in the ditch (stitching over existing stitching).

Here's a slightly clearer view of the stitching line I'm following. It's faint but it's there. Also I did not fold under the tabs until I was almost on them. I made sure to keep my needle in the down position while doing this as well.

Just a couple more shots of me stitching these tabs down.

You want to make sure and try to get the tabs to fold as flat as possible and have the tops line up as much as possible so that your new header on the curtain doesn't look flunky.

So here's the curtains hanging. You can see the shadow of the tabs a little bit, but when you move away from the window you can't tell at all. It doesn't help that the white cotton shows everything as well.

Here's the view of the back of the curtain - looking up at the curtain rod. The rod slides nicely along the new back tabs, but it doesn't  hang limply. I also did not cut those tabs in case I wanted to undo this alteration in the future. I probably never will, but you never know.

Now for the fine print. When you buy an 84" curtain and you convert it from tab top to back tab you will lose about 3 inches. I avoided this, because the curtains I bought from Ikea were unfinished at the bottom, so I measured down 84" from the header I was going to be creating. Just an FYI. :)

One more of the finished product. :)

Hope you guys enjoyed this super simple tutorial!

Have a great day,
Heather

Ok, so another song is in my head. Leaving on a jet plane.....don't know when I'll be back again....
Remember that scene in Armageddon? Love it when Michael Clark Duncan and Steve Buscemi join in. :) In fact I'm going to share it with y'all. :)
There. Wasn't that nice? Don't much care for Mr. Affleck, but I do love that his oldest is named Violet, and she's about Dev's age. :)  Ok so I have majorly strayed from my point, but you guys are used to that aren't you? Ah well, at least the song has something to do with the content of the post. I was able to go get some more Cherry Red thread and finish up those curtains of Devlin's! Yay! It only took twice as long as it should have because I ran out of thread! Whoopie!


Ok I'm done with the sarcasm....I promise. Efff. I can't even get that right. :) Alright, I promise I'm done and without further ado lets get on with this tute!

As I've said a couple of times now this curtain alteration is super duper easy and fast.

Start with some curtains. Then go find yourself some fabric that has a cool design that you can cut out and appliqué to your curtain. Really that's it, but I took pictures anyways. :) So let's get this engine started.
 After drawing all of my boxes, I cut everything out and then separated them into two piles since I have two curtains. I did not take any pictures of the next steps because its really screw-up proof. I just randomly placed each of those squares on the curtains and then zig-zag stitched around each one. I had my zig-zags about 1/4" in from the raw edge, and then I frayed the cotton a bit to make them look more authentic. So here's what I ended up with! Pay no mind to the stray threads. You know its homemade if there are threads still attached!
 Here's the finished  product up and hanging!
 Oh yea...I changed his curtains completely. You see we were having an issue where H (and probably Dev) like to pull on them so the poor curtain rod was constantly having to be bent back up into place. Not to mention that the original red curtains are probably 3 years old and are faded beyond belief. It was time for a change.
 Here's another before and after. I love the after so much better, but I'll tell you what....Dev was none to happy with me when I first suggested the new curtains. In fact, he didn't speak to me for about an hour after I bought the new curtains, but when the airplane fabric was found....boy oh boy did that guy of mine change his story. :)
 Here's a picture of them open. I love  these curtains. They are a heavyweight twill from Ikea. Love! You may be wondering why there is so much space between the airplanes when obviously I could have fit a lot more on there, and the answer is because I was certain Dev would want me to incorporate some red back into his curtains so I left space to do so. This was why he was so mad about the curtains. They weren't red. He may still ask, but I can always take them down and add red to them if he wants. :)
I just have to show you guys this picture because this was the ghetto picture I was going to go with if I couldn't get more thread. Doesn't it look spectacular? Devlin had a fit, laughing fit that is over how redonkulous this looks. Luckily after the thread was acquired, it maybe took 15 minutes for me to get the last one up. Yay!

Well next week is going to be fun, because next Friday is my 1 year blogiversary! So much fun! I hope you guys will join me because I'm hoping to have some great stuff for you guys! Have a great day and I'll see ya next week!

So remember when I told you guys that I was working on an even simpler curtain transformation that I would show you guys today? You know....when I said that yesterday? Well you know what they say about the best laid plans....
Yea....It was that kind of day. I ran out of thread after only getting one curtain up. Hopefully tomorrow I can run out to get some more. Otherwise...well...otherwise you're going to see the ghetto pictures I had planned putting up until I remembered that I had yet to show off Bet's creation! My grandmother made me a roman shade for the window above my sink! Unfortunately I don't know how she did it, because I've never made one, but I do know that we went to Walmart and I picked out a chocolate suede thermal panel (for $15) and she created gorgeousness!


Before I get on to the showing of the goodness I will show you what had been there. These copper panels. I have like 80 bajillion yards of this  lightweight taffeta-esque fabric, which is awesome, and it did a good job of blocking the morning sun, but it did not insulate real well against the cold that leaked in through this window.
We've had that window adjusted, and that helped a little bit with the amount of cold air coming from it, but not much. So I wanted a thermal shade, but then I didn't want to have to fuss with it and adjust the pleats and gathers and the like which is when Bet suggested the shade.  I am so tickled with how well it all came together.
The copper stripes you see are the same taffeta from the curtains before, and some of them hide stitching lines, because that window is 47-1/4" wide and the original thermal panel was not. Bet pieced it together and then let the magic fly. I wanted pleats in the shade even when it wasn't pulled up so she added those too. She's so amazing. :) Oh...and you're also getting better pictures of the can light conversion pendant. Still loving that light! Oh, oh and you can see the window valence. Its the same one that was in the family room. that may have been part of the reason for me wanting to change the family room's curtains. Too much of the same. You know...too matchy matchy. I still love the valence in the kitchen though. I think its mostly the fabric though. :)

So here are some more shots of the shade and the light. :)
  This would be what I want to keep out. Yea that would be last Wednesday. Fun fun. Luckily the storm that is wreaking havoc across the midwest and northeast and missing us. Sorry for all those getting hit, but I will take the rain promised us. Hopefully it doesn't freeze. :)
Like I said earlier....hopefully tomorrow I can get the curtains in Dev's room done. Although I will tell y'all that he's pleased as punch about the curtain that did get done and put up. I hope you guys stay warm and I'll see you tomorrow!