Drawing the Curtains on Fugly Home Decor

    I was just going through some of my photos and I came across these beauties. I had taken these specifically for a post about making my own curtains, that apparently I never got around to writing. You may recall about a year ago I wrote a post about my new house and all the work that needed doing to get it to look like my husband and I lived in it as opposed to a tramp from the 60's. My first big task was curtains, because the ones we had were pretty fugly and really didn't even work that well.
    I tackled the master bedroom first, because that's where we sleep (obviously) and needed some morning light blocked out. I had (and seem to still not have) any money to purchase curtains, I couldn't find any that I liked anyway, and I couldn't even really find any fabric that I fancied (Sheffield is short on good fabric shops as far as I can determine). So, being the spendthrift, DIY, crafty sort of person that I am, I bought myself some super cheap king-sized flat sheets from Wilkinson's (one in light green and one in teal) and cut them both in half, sewed them together (green on one side, teal on the other) folded the top over till the length was where I wanted it (just touching the floor) pinned and sewed in my loop for the curtain rod and voilà! My awesome two-tone bedroom curtains, which do a fairly decent job of blocking out the sunlight and peeping neighbours and match the rest of my bed linens fairly well.

    Next it was on to the three windows in our lounge. I knew I needed two sets of curtains for these (the middle window is larger then the other two) and I wanted floor length with fat horizontal stripes. Checked everywhere for these, couldn't find them for sale anywhere in the UK (including online). But i did find a couple tutorials on how to make my own, which seemed a bit complicated, so generally I ignored them and made it up as I went along.
    Again, straight to Wilko's for cheap sheets, I had to get four this time, two teals and two white's. There was a bit more measuring and math to do as well to sort out the width of my stripes and how many panels I could get from each sheet without wasting material. In the end I made a cardboard template so that each stripe would be exactly the same and once the panels were cut I trimmed off the seam allowance from my template to help make sure that my stripes all came out even and straight as I pinned and sewed them together.
    So once the panels were sewn together I hemmed them all around and again used my curtain rod to help me find the right length, pinned and sewed in a loop. Now at the time I didn't have the spare change for extra white sheets to do the lining on these, so I just left them semi-transparent, which is fine because we don't hang around naked in our living room, or try to sleep in there (although sometimes a nap happens). But someday in the near future I will go and get a couple white sheets, half them down the middle and line these bad boys. Probably just unpick my curtain rod loop seam, add the lining sheet, then sew them both back up along the old unpicked seam again. Anyway, whole project cost me less than £20 for the four curtains, which is mega savings when I could have ordered something similar for four times that amount! Pretty awesome I think.