Confessions of the weak willed

Now you may remember from here that, as the bedroom was a temporary decoration, I was going to keep the existing curtains for a while. But I didn't. I gave in. There was nothing wrong with them, they were  a vintage style in cotton, the colours went well with the new paint and they were already in situ but they were OK, just OK. The other issue was that that the room faces south east and so in the morning they let in a lot of light.

Wake up call

Existing curtains

So I decided to make some new ones as I am sure that the colour scheme will remain the same. After some internet trawling I found the perfect fabric at one of my favourite suppliers, Bell House Fabrics.
I used to be lucky enough to live near them and spent many a happy hour rummaging through their fabric rolls. Now they sell on the internet and I found a great Clarke & Clarke fabric which was perfect.
After cutting three curtains out (there are two windows) I discovered a fault in the fabric - a large hole.

Finger sized hole

I phoned them up and they were brilliant, not only offering to replace the fabric free of charge but also checking that the amount I had asked for included any pattern matching.
The interesting thing with the pattern was which way it went. The sample I received had no borders, and as it is a woven cotton no obvious way up. However when the fabric roll arrived the up arrow on the selvedge was not the way I expected and looked wrong, so I ignored it and technically made the curtains upside down.
I haven't made lined curtains for ages and forgot how much hand stitching there is but eventually (after four days) they were finished and I'm pretty pleased with the results. They certainly block a lot of early morning light and work well with the overall scheme. The photograph below gives quite a good indication of colour. The shot was taken straight after the photo of the original curtains so you can see the difference blackout lining makes.

No more light

In place

Meanwhile the sitting room continues and another temporary decoration - this time the guest room.

Until next time,



Sharon