Tag Archives: Home Wares

This is the second set of curtains in our lounge room, opposite the other pair here.  As this window faces the street I made these curtains first, the other set was made a little further down the track, er OK a lot further, maybe a year?!  I know, how lazy am I…!
So, observant readers will notice straight away; this set is of chocolate brown chenille, as opposed to the the other curtains which are crimson.  This is partly because I don’t like my rooms to be too matchy matchy; I’m partial to a mishmash of household items each with their own inherent story and beauty that doesn’t necessarily relate to the item alongside it, all in one room.  Our family has collected furniture and decorations over years, as sentiments, funds, whimsy and holiday souvenirs have dictated, so my decorating style reflects this; there is no perfectly co-ordinated “House & Garden” perfection around here.  But that’s how I like it.

One set of my lounge room curtains!  There is another set, which I will post pictures of next week.  I do try to limit my blogging in some ways, as in, yes, I do post every day which may be excessive but there may come a time when my enthusiasm wanes and you will be left in relative peace from my random sewing onslaughts…  For now I’m steadily working through all the stuff I’ve made, both past and present and with a smattering of my fashion ideas as they occur to me…  I hope this is not too boring.
This is the window facing onto our courtyard and all the flowering plants in it are red, raspberry or pink in colour, so I went with this cheerful and cosy crimson chenille fabric for the curtains to complement the outlook.  Just a simple (huge!) rectangle of fabric two and a half times the width of the window, with curtain tape sewn to the top and triple pleat hooks inserted in the appropriate places… nothing fancy, but simple curtains are my preference.  These have been up for about four years now.  I love the subdued gloss of the polished steel curtain rods at the top and like to see them exposed.  Thus no pelmets.

Boring curtain alert: As previously warned I do have a preference for the simple and uncluttered look in my house, so my curtains are not going to win any awards for innovation here… that being said I feel these curtains are perfect for our family room.  It’s not so much the curtains themselves that are interesting (they are not) but the ability they have through their translucency to transform the feel of the room and provide another ever-changing moody ambience to the room; if I could work out how to put a gif on this blog then I would, because this static first picture cannot adequately convey the shifting shadow play of leaves that is cast into the room, nor the liquid rippling of the pool reflected onto the curtains like a colourless abstract moving work of art; its a spectacle that I can never tire of.

When we wish to have sunlight in the room we can open the curtains to look out on our pool and on the backyard trees with the never-ending avian aerial display that exists therein…

Here are the curtains I made for our master bedroom.  Oh, I did warn you that most of my curtains were simply boring rectangles… so I hope expectations haven’t been raised too high… I expect my curtains to be simple and functional and easy to make.  Tick, tick and tick; these curtains fitted this criteria perfectly.
The one slightly ornamental detail on these curtains is that they have been cut about 1.5m too long, so they spill out on the floor in a kind of drapey pile of fabric, which I like the look of; suggests opulence and plenty in the manner of Marie Antoinette, no?  Well, I like it anyway…  If there is one room in the house where decadence and opulence and self-indulgence can run riot then the master bedroom can expect to be first in line.
Our bedroom faces the front yard and the street, so privacy is an essential, at the same time I simply must be able to have daylight in any room I’m in; this lace back-curtain does the trick beautifully.  When we first hung it up we spent a few minutes racing inside and out reassuring ourselves how invisible (or not) we are on the inside from the street, and I’m happy to report complete daytime screening is provided by these lace backdrops, as long as at night-time you don’t turn the light on and have the green chenille curtains open.  In that case you may as well be on-stage in a theatre…
The curtains are simply moss green chenille rectangles, width two and a half times the width of the curtain rod, with curtaining tape sewn to the top, then triple pleat hooks inserted in the appropriate casings on the tape.  The lace backdrop is simply threaded onto a white pole through a top casing; and the pole perched on top of the curtain brackets.  Easy peasy.
(OK, I did have to pull the bed out quite a way to get this full length picture of the curtains…! usually the bed obscures half of this view)
Today’s random picture below: seen on my walk this morning

Sewing curtains is a real drag.  No seamstress will say otherwise.  Boring, all straight seams, no challenge in it.  And mundane.
Most of the curtains I’ve made have been plain rectangles with curtaining tape sewn on at the top, which then just hangs there in an unobtrusive way.  I like plain curtains.
But for these dining room curtains I did something a little more interesting; I picked up the two bottom corners and the centre of the bottom together, inserted a big safety pin through all these layers, and pinned the whole lot to the central curtain ring.  That’s on each curtain, btw…  Just for something a bit different.  Oh, also, there is no curtaining tape sewn to the top of the curtains, but the hooks are sewn directly onto the top hem of the curtains.  Again for something a bit different.
The little pussycat figurine standing on the window sill was hand-carved by my grandfather.  Often there is a real pussycat there too.