A few weeks ago, Mr F was busy decorating (with me supervising of course!) and after all the walls were freshly painted and the new carpet was laid, it was time to think about new curtains. Normally I make my own, and in our first home together I busied myself making soft furnishings galore. The windows were adorned with festoon blinds and curtains and pelmets and there was a huge array of cushions on the sofa, and yes, it did rather resemble a Laura Ashley catalogue, but it was the 1980's and was very fashionable at the time! And our first home together was a small Victorian house that lent itself to that style of décor. Then 13 years ago we moved to a very modern 1950's built military-style bungalow and all the window treatments that I'd lovingly made stayed put, as our new windows were HUGE - I mean really HUGE, and nothing that I had would fit. And so I set about making new curtains for the lounge. The windows were nearly 3 metres wide. And over 2 metres tall. And then there was another pair for the French doors at the opposite end of the room leading into the conservatory. Well I can honestly say that making those curtains nearly killed me! I resolved then NEVER to make another pair of curtains for all those windows! So after the decorating was completed, I started my search for some ready-made curtains, and discovered that those HUGE windows were going to be a devil to find curtains to fit. Either I'd have to do some minor alterations to the length, or make the whole things my self. After about 2 minutes of thinking about that, I ordered 2 pairs of HUGE curtains from Glasswells, that only needed to be shortened by a few inches. It's so much easier to alter curtains from the top than fiddling about with hems on curtains (and don't even get me started on hems in linings!) so I bought some extra deep heading tape from Barretts of Woodbridge, (no, I wasn't going to spend hours unpicking the original heading tape) and set about turning over the tops of the curtains...
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...leaving the original heading tape in place when I turned the tops over means the top of the curtain is a bit thicker, but it gathers up beautifully. Sewing these with a walking foot also made this task so much simpler, as there was no risk of the layers puckering underneath. This heading tape from Barretts of Woodbridge was extra deep, and as the curtains are so big, it makes them hang really well...
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...and a final photograph taken this morning, with the sun shining just a bit TOO brightly! Before I'd altered the curtains, I'd hung them up for a few days to see if I could live with them being "extra long" but Jasper decided he could curl up behind the curtains and make himself a copy bed while he waited for Mr F to come home from work, which wasn't my idea of a nice neat window dressing. Now I've finished my alterations, Jasper will have to find somewhere it curl up and sleep during the evenings ;) Well hopefully that will be the end of "normal" sewing for a few years and now I can get back to quilting again!
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