#needleworkmonday :: Much ado about curtains

First of all, buying a curtain is not easy peasy at all. The width and length of your window needs to be measured carefully and you will need to know the kind of hook that is being used for the type of curtain railing that you have, usually either the curtain tracks kind:

Image sourced from Shuttershock

or the curtain pole kind:

Image sourced from Shuttershock

Once you have all the information handy, you can go to your favourite store to choose your curtain, which is kind of the fun part although sometimes the design that you really like do not come in the curtain type that you need. Some designs are only available for the pole kind and some only for the curtain tracks kind. But nowadays, we can get curtains that are meant for tracks to be used on poles with pole hooks like these:

Image sourced from Shuttershock

After we have purchased our desired curtain/s, it was time for the real work to begin. If you are lucky, your window or sliding doors length and width works just fine with the curtains that you bought. Then, you can hook them up straightaway.

In my case, I had to get 2 sets of curtains, both were of awkward lengths. I had to get 10ft curtains for both sets but one set was about 13cm too short and another was about 30cm too long. And so, alterations were required. Curtain alterations can be a lengthy process due its length and for every set, you have 2 pieces to do.

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First up, measure, measure, measure and measure again. I had to use the hardware tape measurement because the curtain length was longer than my sewing measuring tape.

Then, mark it...

And snip, snip, snip while praying that you got the measurements correct:

After that, it was time to hem the curtain's raw edges. I folded and sewed the edges twice:

Then, it was showtime:


Luckily this one fitted pretty well:


Next, I took the cut pieces of the first altered curtain and stitched to the bottom of the second set of curtains.
I measured a couple of times but unfortunately, the additional piece was still too long :/.
I could leave them be but they do look sluggish and messy on the floor. The only thing left to do was to make them shorter...


.. by hand sewing:


After sitting down for 2 hours, the sewing was completed and I hung them. They do look neater now:


Then, there was another set of curtains, not new but the width was not long enough to cover the window.
For the past year, I have been using a clothes peg to "join" the curtains :D


Since I was on a sewing and curtain washing spree, I figured I might as well...


... join them by machine sewing using zigzag stitch:


These guys were a little tricky because as the machine sewed, I was not really paying attention to the tension of both pieces of curtain and I ended up with this:

Ugh!

I was debating whether or not to redo the whole thing. At that time, the battle was 50-50 but after much contemplation and looking at this one long and one short join disappointingly, I decided to redo - extra hour of work to remove the stitches and re-sew slower.


The tension was still quite irregular and the curtain was curved but much better than having one long and one short curtain :D

Phew! I am done with curtains for the year!

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Remember to join @needleworkmonday's Year End Review Challenge: How was your fiber year 2019?
Share them with us! Contest ends in 14 days.

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