Total blackout

It is high time that you all got an update following my last disastrous post.  The title of this post could refer to my lack of contact with my loving public (!), and I apologise profusely for that*.  In fact I'm referring to the fact that DH and I are now sleeping much better (and longer - oops!) because we have a pair - YES, A PAIR - of matching curtains in our bedroom!

It has been a very long road to reach this point, but goodness, it feels good and looks pretty good too.  At least, we both like them.

* The fact is, we've had so much other stuff going on recently, that the curtains have been about the only creative thing I've had in my sights over the last few months.  Hopefully that will change soon and I can get back to something slightly less bulky and time consuming.  So, please don't give up on me and continue to watch this space!?!

A complete disaaaaaster

I'm sure you all realise that not everything works out as planned with sewing projects, as with anything else.  Well, let me tell you that that was definitely the case for me last weekend (not the one just gone - I had to wait a week to blog about it as I was too worked up and upset by it all!).

My curtain-making had been on hold for almost a fortnight thanks to a late delivery of an online order for extra header tape, so I was already frustrated and behind on things.  DH kindly went to John Lewis late night shopping on his way home one evening to get me some more so that I could carry on properly the following day - but they'd run out of stock!  So I went into town myself on Friday morning to track it down elsewhere - and finally got it at the third shop after a 'magical mystery tour' of the West End.  And when I got home, there was the online order waiting patiently on the doormat!

So, Friday afternoon was spent putting all three layers of the HUGE curtain together - pinning, tacking, sewing side seams, hemming ...  Saturday afternoon was more of the same followed by pinning the sections for the pinch pleats (my least favourite part of the process).  I hadn't been happy with how the pleats had turned out in the first curtain (currently hanging at our bedroom window), so I'd decided to try to use the fabric pattern when planning the pleats on the second one.  However, the pattern had other ideas.  So at supper time, I'd had enough and was feeling pretty miserable and frustrated - and gave up.

Sunday afternoon, despite feeling groggy and headachey, I persevered.  If it was the last thing I was going to do, I was going to get BOTH curtains up by the end of the day!  I decided I was asking too much of myself to get the pleats to work with the pattern.  This was only my second attempt at pinch pleats and my first with patterned fabric, after all.  So, how many pleats did I want - 9 on the first curtain weren't enough and it was all a bit baggy.  So I did some maths for 10, 11 or 12 pleats and decided I'd give 12 a go.  All pinned, I marked the sewing line on my machine to help keep things straight and away I went.  Hooray - 12 pleats ready to pinch!

DH was out for the afternoon, so I waited to hang it once he got back.  And all was looking pretty good .... until we drew them closed ... or not as it turned out.  The second curtain wasn't wide enough to cover the whole window!!!!   AAAAAAAAAAAAARRGH!  And it was puckering at the bottom, so there I was tugging gently as the leading edge .....  when I realised that the leading edge WASN'T MEANT TO BE THE LEADING EDGE.  Not only wasn't it wide enough - I'd pleated the bottom (ie it was also upside down!).

After a couple of tears for frustration (understatement), I decided that the sooner I unpicked the whole thing, the quicker I'd get onto resewing it.

Isn't it weird - it had taken me a number of afternoons to get the blasted curtain put together, but it only took me about an hour to unpick it completely.

And then it hit me - the pattern wasn't going to match across the window!  Somehow, the second curtain had been cut out about 3 inches lower down the pattern than the first so the only way that I'll get the pattern to match across the window is to unpick the curtain that is already hanging as well!!!!

Please, will someone pass me the valium?!  NOW!!!

Showered with luxury

We've almost cleared all signs of the previous owners of the house now.  Sounds harsh I know, but they were a bit hippyish and did things 'on the cheap', for example, using bubble wrap and polystyrene sheets to 'insulate' beneather the floorboards!  Obviously, they weren't too worried about the fire hazard that it posed.

Old shower curtain

One small trace of them is the shower curtain in our en suite.  It is quite a nice one really, with blue sea shells printed all over it.  However, trying to get the stains out of the bottom of it is getting more and more difficult now.  Added to that, it doesn't match the colour scheme.  I was thrilled when I spotted a teal shower curtain in Ikea that went beautifully with our tiles and paintwork, but when I got it home it was too short.   I've since discovered that it is ludicrously difficult to get shower curtains longer than 180cm.
So, I decided that I'd have to make one instead.  Worst comes to the worst, I'd buy some plasticy material for a lining and choose some nice fabric for the outside and make both myself.  But on a recent visit to stay with DS I was browsing through her Next and La Redoute catalogues when I spotted a plain, white shower curtain in the La Redoute catalogue that was 200cm long!!!!!  RESULT!  And it was under a tenner.

New shower curtain

I've had samples of various teal fabrics from John Lewis and the first one to arrive was the one we both liked best.  It is a simple stripe - fairly wide stripes in white and teal with a slightly satin finish.  Perfetto!  Added to that, by the time I got around to buying the fabric, it was less than half price in the sale too.  :-)

And now that I'm a curtain expert (!), it wasn't too time consuming and fiddly to make the outer curtain myself.  I thought that it would be a good excuse to take any frustration or whatever out on bashing the eyelets into place, but I failed abysmally, so I had to ask DF for help!  So now we'll have to look particularly smart when we take a shower!!! ;-)

Completion weekend

Before you all panic, no, we haven't decided to move house or anything.  This is more exciting, by far (imho at least!) and certainly cheaper and less stressful!  I was determined last week to stick at it over the weekend and finish some long-overdue projects, if for no other reason than to have something to tell you all about!

So, Friday I added to my list of (finally) finished UFOs by sewing the binding to edge the Breton napkins I started last century.

Breton napkins to match DM's tablecloth - started c.1999, completed May 2013

I also finished a gift for MIL (a 'commission' from FIL) - a (very) small keyring of the Canterbury cross.

But the major achievement was to finish (and hang) the dining room curtains.  I didn't make quite as much progress on them on Friday as I'd hoped, but at least each layer was cut out and ready to put together.  Most of Saturday was spent doing that and getting the header buckram into place (with a few gardening sojourns when DH needed a second pair of hands), but was cut short when I ran out of said buckram (pants!).  Thankfully a quick trip to John Lewis curtain department was possible on Sunday after chapel and so, while DH demolished a shrub tree in the garden, I got on with pleating the curtains so we could hang them before the day was over.

It was much easier making these.  The main thing was that there wasn't quite (understatement of the millennium) as much bulk in them as there was in the living room curtains.  But obviously, I'd made one pair already, so I had a much better idea of what I was doing and what worked well etc from my previous experience.  Another 'improvement' I made with making these was to cut the interlining to the hanging length (plus top seam allowance) so that the final stretch of finishing the hems off should be slightly easier.  That is the plan at least.  I'm still waiting for the weight tape for both pairs, so I won't finish them completely until that arrives.  However, in the meantime I'm hoping the pleats will set reasonably with their ribbons holding them in place and shall look forward to drawing curtains in both rooms and sitting back to admire my hard work.

Divertimenti

What is it about me?  I've plenty of projects to be getting on with and tick off my (long) to-do list, but instead I get distracted and start something new.

I should be finishing of DNw's bus sampler, but I've come to the conclusion that I don't like doing french knots on Aida fabric, so I'm jibbing and trying to delay the inevitable.

I could also be making the dining room curtains to match the gigantic ones in the living room (thankfully, the window there is a LOT narrower!), but I've only managed to do one layer of them so far.

Instead I entertained myself on a rather dull train journey last week by making a key ring (free gift in my favourite cross-stitching magazine).  Then I made a birthday card for SIL whilst watching a couple of hours of BBC4 one evening and now I'm working on a wedding card for some friends who are getting married at the weekend.

Blood, sweat and tears

Well, at long last, finally, o'r diwedd, endlich, enfin ...

... we have a PAIR of curtains in the living room.

Yes, you did read that correctly - A PAIR, two, one at either side of the window, at each end of the curtain pole.

Can you believe it?!  I barely can, to be honest!

And WHAT a relief.  I was beginning to think that I'd never get there and I'd been a complete idiot even contemplating making such ENORMOUS curtains single-handedly.

To be honest though, it wasn't single-handed.  Without DF and DH's help with the calculations for the pleats and DH's help with laying the second one out and measuring three times (yes, THREE times), I was VERY close to throwing in the towel (or should I say curtain).

Admittedly, I still have to hem about 10 miles of curtains (I've already used a kilometre of sewing thread - literally!) and buy some weights for the hems.  And I haven't even started on the matching dining room pair (which are at least a fraction of the width of these monsters).

But I'm thrilled to bits that both are now up.

We almost had a "disaaaaaaster" (to quote Craig Revel Horwood) when I was trying to move an extra ring to the other side of the bracket after both curtains were up.  Diolch, thank you, merci, danke to DH for his patience, soothing words, muscle and spare pair of hands to a) hold the weight of the curtain and b) pick up all the bits I dropped in my panic.

And to explain the title of this post;
blood - I've stabbed my fingers so often making these curtains that I have literally bled my way through the process (and there has been the odd stain on the fabric too - hopefully all now hidden within pleats where it didn't all come off)
sweat - trying to man-handle that much fabric to hang so high up is brilliant aerobic exercise!
tears - well, there weren't any, but they were VERY close on a number of occasions.

Oh, and sorry for all the italics, capitals, exclamation marks etc!!!!!

Now, where is that champagne?

Raise the curtain

The day has finally come and we have a curtain in the living room. 
That's right, just the one! 
For the time being at least.

It has, to say the least, been a very steep learning curve making my first ever pinch/triple pleat curtains.  Never one to make things easy for myself, I had to make gigantic curtains out of silk to ensure that I had enough of a challenge!  There's nothing like putting a bit of pressure on yourself for making a huge project even bigger.

So, while I summon up the courage to start the matching pair, I'm going to sit back (with a nice glass of something?) and admire my work (trying not to notice the less-than-perfect bits too much).

New commissions

Having got some Christmas stitching out of my system, it is now time to settle down to some serious stitching (and that doesn't include completing my curtain marathon!).

Over the Christmas holiday I got two new commissions - Yippee! 

The first is for a picture for my DN's bedroom - he's only 10 months old, so it is in the cute and cuddly vein.  His sister was given one by a friend when she was born, but as often happens with second/third ... children, he hasn't had one, so my SIL asked if I'd make him one.  He is such a sweetheart, I could hardly refuse, could I?

So, we've chosen a good old London Routemaster bus (for a good young London lad) full of cute little animals.  He's mad about vehicles already and has a similar print in his room and was given a lovely wooden London black cab for Christmas, so this should be perfect.  I must admit that I'm cheating a little but using a kit I found online here, but despite being fairly creative, drawing isn't exactly my strong point!

And my BIL (different side of the family!) has also asked me to stitch a poem for a friend to commemorate an award she received last summer.  The poem was written especially for the occasion and her name means 'snowdrop' in Welsh, and after a bit of hunting, I've found a nice Art Nouveau snowdrop border to go with it.  With a bit of luck mine will be flowering in the back garden as I stitch!  All I need now is to find a nice Art Nouveau font for the poem and I'll be ready to go.

I'll try to add some 'progress' photos (and of the snowdrops in the garden) here as I go along for you to keep an eye on things.

But for now, it's curtains for me if I don't get on with ours!!!

Week 1 progress

Week 2 progress - it is beginning to look like the back end of a bus!

Weeks 3 & 4 - almost half way there

Light relief

A couple of weeks ago I spent most of an afternoon and early evening crawling on the living room floor between layers of the curtain I'm sewing for the living room.  The cats were quite perplexed and thought it best to steer clear!

So, as a bit of light relief from that and the Christmas madness, I've been making some Christmas decorations.

I rather like the magazine, Cross Stitcher, and although there are lots of designs I'm sure I'll never make, there are quite a few that I find quite tempting.  November's issue had a free gift - the materials to make a garland of stars/snowflakes.  In the pack were three red and white patterened card stars and three perforated card stars ready to embroider, red and white embroidery silks, red and white cord for stringing it all together and a needle.  According to the instructions, each star should take two hours to make, but I think I managed each one in a little over an hour.

Initially I intended to decorate our dresser with greenery, but as I didn't think I'd have the time to make a traditional garland, these seemed to be the perfect substitute.  However, I found some fairy lights for the dresser, so I've found somewhere else to hang these now.  They're very pretty and I really like the perforated card stars - although I tend to roll fabric around my fingers as I stitch so I had to be careful not to bend the card too much!  Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to buy more of the perforated stars, but I've found instructions how to make your own. What do you think?


I'm so pleased with them I think I may try more of their Christmas designs.  I've gone back through old issues and found the free gifts and spent my quiet time over the Christmas break making them.  My DH is a bit confused why I'm making Christmas decorations when we'll be taking the tree down soon, but I'm enjoying myself. 

There are also some pretty Scandinavian inspired decorations in the December issue that may well fit some of the Framecraft accessories I've had from years (yes, more Ebay purchases!).

Curtains - progess report

The rolls of fabric I'll be using



Curtain no.1 in progress.

As you can see, I have a lot of fabric to deal with.  In fact there are 36 metres of fabric in each curtain, when you tot up the curtain fabric, lining and interlining.  Goodness knows how many miles of stitching I will have done by the time I've finished!

The sewing is actually really easy, but with so much fabric, trying to iron the seams etc is a nightmare.  The most difficult bit so far though was trying to get all three layers in order and inserting the buckram.  I literally had to crawl inside the curtain to do this!  Anyway, now all that is left to do on curtain no.1 is the pleating and hemming now.  I'm going to leave the hemming until I've put them up as I think the floor is uneven.

However, the Christmas tree is now up and in the way, so even if I finish the pleating before Christmas, we won't actually hang the curtains until 2013.

Curtain up II

In the prequel to this post I told you all about my sewing plans for our home and we've now finally reached the second project in that list.

I must admit that I can't wait to have curtains in our living room again.  After the new windows were installed we applied 'privacy film' to the living room windows and used the curtains that had previously been in the living room to replace the hideous blinds we'd inherited in the bedroom.  I can't tell you how nice it is to draw the curtains in our room every day.  It feels like such a luxury after two years of dirty, dusty venetian blinds!

Having said that, I'm also daunted at the prospect of making such HUGE curtains out of silk for the living room and also trying out a new curtain top to boot.

I've made numerous pairs of curtains over the years and have even tried my hand at roller blinds (although they weren't exactly that successful - let's just say it was a rather expensive lesson in how not to cut a straight edge by following the pattern in the fabric!), but the curtains have all had good ol' pencil pleat headings.  But for whatever reason, I've decided to go for triple pleats this time.

I may have mentioned once or twice (!) that they're going to be HUGE curtains, but naturally, you've no idea why.  Well, firstly we have a lovely bay window in our living room which measures about 4.5m in width.  We also have very high ceilings on the ground floor, so the curtains will be almost 3m long too!  As I asked here, how do I save myself from 'drowning' in so much fabric?

If I ever surface from the sea of fabric, I'll try to keep you all posted on my progress!

Pretty in a Pinny

Well hello - it is nice to be back with you all!  Please accept my apologies for my long absence.  It has been rather a hectic time since my last post, but we're finally getting straight again (and de-stressing in the process!).  And my, what a difference it has made already.  The ground floor is already much warmer and cosier.   The new windows are lovely and we planted ALL the bulbs (with a little lot of help from my parents).  Unfortunately, I didn't quite manage to finish the painting jobs as I'd hoped, but that will all be done next week, along with new curtain poles in three rooms (made by my lovely friend, Nia).

Right, back to the business in hand.

You may recall that back in February I mentioned some lovely craft/sewing books I'd acquired and that MIL requested that I make her an apron from one of them as her Christmas present.

Well, that time has come and I really need to get on with it before larger projects get in the way (eg living room curtains).

The book in question is the Liberty Book of Home Sewing and it is full of gorgeously, tempting projects to wear around the home and for the home.  My lovely MIL is a very keen cook, so an apron is just the thing for her, although I suspect that this one (as seen on Katherine Hannaford's Double Exposure blog - I'm dying to know if she managed to make every project in the book!) won't be her 'working' one, but more for show!

Having browsed through the book again (and drooled!) and chosen fabrics for MIL's gift (more drooling), I also got thinking about other projects in the book that would be fun to make and am now seriously considering some others as Christmas presents and possible additions to our home.  I'll keep you posted on how I get on with these soon.

New treats

There is great excitement in our house this week, as we have ordered all the fabric for our living and dining room curtains!  I'm not sure how many times we did the maths before placing the order.  I think I went over the sums about four times in the end - just as well, as at one point I'd calculated the drop as the width!

The fabric was delivered on Tuesday and the linings should come any day.  Then, all I will need is the header tape and plenty of time and space to make them!  I have a feeling the spare room will be commandeered for the job!  And with a bit of luck, we'll be all cosy in time for Christmas

Lists

It's that time of year again.  Summer holidays over and everyone thinking of the 'new year'.  A depressing thought?

Well, not for DH apparently.  He finds it quite exciting (he likes plans!).  As a result, we spent some of the bank holiday weekend planning our autumn ... and that comprised of creating a number of lists!

A list of people we want to see
A list of things we want to do
A list of jobs to organise
A list of jobs in the garden
A list of jobs in the house ...

The list of lists goes on ...

Naturally, in the middle of all these lists, there is a list of projects for me to sew (with one or two extras by me that aren't part of the above listed lists!).   So, here it is (in no particular order) for you to help keep me on track (and check up on me!):

• Tidy kitchen blinds (I know, I made these months ago and still haven't tidied the odds and ends up!)  Hooray, I finally finished them! And I've now also altered them to fit the new windows - happy me!
• Replace spare bedroom curtain linings (thoughtfully shredded by sunlight and cats) - one down, one to go!  Almost there now, just need to finish the pleating and rehang :-)
• Buy living/dining room curtain fabric (a warning - there will be miles of this when I get it as the windows are ridiculously tall) and allow some extra fabric for matching/coordinating cushions
• Make up living/dining room curtains (is there such a thing as a 'life saver' to prevent you drowning in fabric?!) - see above re cushion covers too.  Hooray - finished sewing them, just need to finish hemming them now!
• make new white blouse/tunic for self using Amy Butler Liverpool pattern (as a test piece for making a patterned one for DM and me)
• make apron for MIL from Liberty book I had for Christmas last year (in time for Christmas this year)
• Make bread basket and tea cosy for kitchen out of left over blind fabric
• Start designing anniversary sampler for DS (significant anniversary not for 23 months, so I have a little time!)
• Start designing bicentenary sampler for church (not sure I'll make it for the bicentenary, but certainly to mark it)
• Make/embroider some Christmas decorations as gifts for this Christmas (or maybe just sew some Christmas gifts)
• Order fabric for bedroom curtains (once pole is in place) and make up, also cushion for chaise longue and throw and cushion for bed
• Cover lampshade for bedroom (if we still can't find one we like and can afford!)  We found a lovely one in the Grand Bazaar in Instanbul

OK, let's be honest.  This list is likely to keep me out of mischief until well into 2013 and beyond, but we can but hope!

PS:  I'll try to remember to strike through those I manage to finish as I go along.

Curtain up

One of my (many) crafting projects this year will be new curtains for our bedroom and living room.  We've chosen the fabric for both rooms, but are just waiting to get new windows organised before we put up the curtain poles and then make the curtains.  It is a long drawn-out process, but I'm sure it will be lovely when it's done.

However, last year finished with my first 'make' for the house (we've been living here for almost 2 years now) - kitchen blinds. It was a fairly simple decision to make choosing what sort of window covering I wanted in the kitchen - plain, simple Roman blinds.  Then I'd got it in my head that I wanted stripes.  Friends of ours have some lovely stripey Roman blinds in their kitchen - totally the wrong colour for ours, but I'd got their fabric in my head and started looking for something similar in red and green (the accent colours we'd chosen for the otherwise plain, cream kitchen).

Who would have thought that finding stipes in red and green would have been sooooo difficult.  Red and blue - easy.  Pink and green - plenty.  But Green and Red - forget it!  We'd already started getting 'accent pieces' in a nice bright, pillar-box red and had some green bits too (not all the same type of green really, but it all seemed to work reasonably together), so that sort of tied us.

Thankfully, after trawling online fabric shops and fabric manufacturers, we finally found something suitable in good old John Lewis.  Not quite the pillar-box red I'd imagined, but lovely all the same.

After ordering the fabric and buying all the odds and ends to make the blinds work, it took me about 3-4 weekends to make them.  It was my first attempt at Roman blinds, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'll be making any more in a hurry (and I hadn't realised how difficult it was to sew in a straight line before).  But we are pleased with them (well, I will be once I've got over the critical-of-my-own-work stage).  The kitchen sounds so different now that they are up and it does brighten the place up a bit (it is fairly dark and north-facing).

So, here they are ....