Kitchen Curtains

Upholstered cornice, completed, and hemmed panels.

The window over our sink in the kitchen has exposed plastic conduit for wires and things that Nathan really hated. He asked me to make up some curtains, so we plotted about what style and type would look best for the space and what would actually be reasonable to make.

We went to Joann's and looked at some books about making window treatments and decided that we wanted to use a cornice with some panels hanging on the sides. There were some make-your-own kits, but they were crazy expensive. Since the window was small, we didn't need anything elaborate or extravagant so we decided to make our own basic panel from scratch.

Nathan made a simple rectangular cornice form out of old wood (plywood) from the garage and just used some batting and a staple-gun to softly upholster the blue & white fabric we chose. I had some old white & taupe striped breezy fabric leftover from making curtains for my bedroom when I lived in St. Louis in the 2004-2007 time frame. The panels I had were already cut and even hemmed on one side, so I just game a quick hem around and cut them to length.

Et voila! Except they aren't yellow in real life.

Since we wanted to keep the length of the curtains flexible in case of moving to a new place, etc., we didn't actually hang the panels from a traditional curtain rod, instead we left them as big rectangles and used hidden hooks inside the cornice to baste the panels at the correct height to the wood itself. If we move, we just snip the thread and can iron and re-hang at the best height. This also allowed us to bunch the curtains in the corner/edges of the cornice to make sure that we were covering up the conduit that Nathan hated... we didn't care if we could close the window, this was just decorative camouflage.

They've been hanging a few weeks and we love them!

Sewing: Sweet Handkerchief

It is finally here! My new sewing machine that can both wind bobbins and sew without tangling!
It also has decorative stitching and a needle threader. Fancy!

So many stitches

I decided to test it out by using the satin scallop edge to hem a hanky.

I had some old cotton fabric from a lovely quilt I made my mom a bajillion years ago.

Scallop edge, plus trimming

Then I pushed the pedal to the metal, so to speak, and zipped along. After cutting close to the scallop edge and removing extra fabric...

The finished pieces, folded oh-so-nicely!

Ta da!  Handkerchief!