Creative Curtains

Linky up with Claire Justine for a little creative news and plenty of photos!

As you can see from this photo, I have odd pairs of curtains hanging up in my bedroom!  One set were left behind by the last owner and ...

 these pink floral ones were made by my Mum back in the 1970s for my bedroom when I was a child!

You can also see that the goldy brown "back" curtains are longer than the pink ones - our house is that drafty that we need two sets of curtains at each window!!  They are on separate rails.  You may also notice the plastic container that catches any water that gets through our windows - we do love our house but there is a lot wrong with it too!

 I finally managed to find two pairs of matching curtains made from expensive material with the design woven NOT printed in the colour scheme I was after (and boy has it taken me a very long time!!) in a charity shop for the amazing price of £30.  These curtains even have the lead weights attached in little sewn bags as you can see in the photo.

 To make them the right length for my windows, I first took down the hems and undid the panels from the widest set of curtains (these were three panels each) and then cut (matching the pattern) two lengths from the other set of curtains to add a piece to the bottom of each curtain.  I was able to discard one panel out of each set of three as it had fade marks that were too noticeable.

I pinned to match the pattern and then tacked and hand sewed and turned up the hem.

Next I turned in and pinned and sewed the edges of the lining material to the curtaining to neaten off the sides and now one pair of curtains are hung up in place of the pink ones.  I am going to take them down to iron them and in the better weather I will wash them carefully at a low temperature and hang them on the line to dry but I don't want to shrink them after all my hard work. So far this has taken me three days on and off but it really has saved me a whole heap of money and I am ending up with the curtains I really wanted.

Now I'm off to have a look at what others have created.  Have you made anything recently from scratch or have you up-cycled anything bought from a charity shop or car boot?  You know I'd love to know so leave a comment below :)