Craft Room Curtains - Take 2

I put things off a lot. Like A LOT. Back in January, I posted about my craft room curtain fail. FOUR months ago, I bombed the curtains and I'm just now getting around to fixing them. Want to know how long they were without curtains before that fail? According to my notes about all the things I wanted to add to my new craft room... about a year. Guess how many of those other things I've done. You're correct if you said none :)

Anyway, we are about to put our house on the market (really easy to do with a newborn by the way) and I needed to fix the single/too short curtain issue. Another thing I was concerned about was that the green and white chevrons might be too bold for a perspective buyer. From what I hear, chevrons are sooo 2011. I don't care, I still love them. But I needed to get with the times. Here's a reminder of what the one panel looked like. I never made a second one as I originally intended. I was too defeated from bombing sewing 101 with that curtain.

After the first curtain fail, I was perusing Pinterest and found some beautiful curtains on Apartment Therapy. I figured I could do them on a smaller scale for the craft room. I also wanted to go easy on myself. I don't have a whole lot of time with a one month old so I wanted to use the drapery rings like last time. These little things are handy. I've also used them for other fun projects like this one..

These came together easily, but the trickiest part for me was piecing it together. No matter what I do, I can't seem to cut or sew a straight line. But I made do. Top to bottom, the window was 3 feet, which made for nice, even stripes. I wasn't too sure how wide to make it so I just added 8 extra inches to half of the window width measurement. I didn't put too much thought into it, but it worked out. I didn't add black out backing or clean up the back that faces the neighbor's house. Why put all that effort in for someone else? When I moved in here, the first thing I did was take down all their hideous window treatments. If I'm to suffer the same fate, I would rather not waste my time with the extras, ya know? And the neighbors probably won't even see since it's lower level. Look at their view.

Despite my inability to cut or sew straight (and being in a rush hoping to get done before the baby woke) the pieces came together pretty well.

It took a total of 8 hours to get it finished. It was done between 3 feedings, 3 naps and dinner. I estimate about 2 hours without the non project related activities. I actually like it better than the Chevrons. I hope a buyer will feel the same. I'm starting to really love what this room has become. I may not want to move away :)

I do this for me...I think

This right here is why I started blogging :

Not this exact thing, but projects like it. This is pretty terrible. Granted, it's only one of the panels and you wouldn't pull it across the entire window like this, but still... After seeing this, I just couldn't finish the other one. What would be the point? This is the kind of thing I do all the time. Honestly, I spend more time with the seam ripper than I do sewing. The issue this time? Poor prep. I measured the window, cut out both panels, sewed one and took off to the grocery store, leaving my dear husband to put up the curtain rod. 

I should have done that last part first. As it turns out, you are supposed to put the rod a few inches above the actual window. You can see those missing inches there at the bottom of that curtain panel :)

This project was supposed to be me being productive. Me taking a break and finally attempting to finish this craft room. Productive isn't necessarily my thing. I just looked it up and I painted this craft room in February of last year. It really didn't feel that long, but the window has looked like this ever since:

I got a little off track as usual. The blog. There are so many awesome blogs out there and don't these women's lives seem SO perfect? Doesn't every baked good look amazingly delicious and every crafty project seem to be whipped up quickly with precision and ease despite the fact that there are children around? Who are these women? And why do I keep reading even though I end up feeling completely inadequate? 

So I decided to start this blog. It's not a place where perfection lives. This is where random lives. This is where just ok is sometimes as good as it gets. This is where I document my baking and sewing adventures. Adventure is kind of a nice word for me getting frustrated and crying or ripping out seams or throwing out a baking fail. But it's my adventure and I always end up learning something and this blog allows me to laugh at myself and hopefully you can too.

So there you have it. My craft room curtain fail. I hope you're feeling better about your sewing skills right about now :)