I've finally made some curtains!

Well it has only taken a year and a 3 months since I bought the material and I finally got round to making the lined curtains for our bedroom. After going on about how I was going to start sewing again my boyfriend very kindly bought me a lovely sewing machine last Christmas. And on a trip to visit my parents (who live in the Middle East in Oman) I came back with a suitcase stuffed with incense-scented fabric for a fraction of the price it would have cost in the UK. Apart from making a table cloth quite soon after we got back I never really got going on my sewing machine and I confess it has been gathering dust for a while. But I told myself that I needed to overcome my reservations and just get stuck in...otherwise I wasn't allowed to start any other craft projects. 

So I did eventually manage to make the curtains in a weekend and I wish I had lots of lovely photos but one of the main reasons I haven't been blogging recently is that I seem to have lost my camera.  I've been hoping it will turn up but as it's been almost a month now I might have to accept that the camera is gone (possibly left it in a bar/on a bus!) So anyway I thought I'd better start blogging again in the hope that it will turn up and I can add some great photos later.

So I do have some images from my iphone but as it only handles well-lit compositions I haven't been able to get a good shot of our bedroom. So I'll post the photos of the finished curtains when I get them sorted.

It was my first attempt at curtains and although it was time consuming it was actually fairly easy. The worst part was measuring and calculating the amount of material I needed. I've never been very good at maths and I was terrified of making a mistake and ruining the material. I used a wonderful book by Catherine Merrick and Rebecca Day which I found really useful. Even when I made a mistake with my hem allowances, I still managed to salvage the situation and so I was super proud when I got to hang them. It instantly made the bedroom cosy and we could finally take down the bits of material we had put up as a temporary measure when we first moved in.

So even though buying in some curtains wouldn't have been very expensive and would clearly have been much quicker, I now get a warm glow every time I look at mine. It's great to know that I made them and I'm now much more confident with the sewing machine.  And it's given me the confidence to start planning many more sewing projects. More details to come...