I’m sure no one else is afflicted with the Friday afternoon syndrome, but let me tell you Friday afternoons sort of suck. They drag on and on and on. And you just want to be out of there! Last Friday was especially tough, it had been a brutal day and all I really wanted to do was to go home, curl up in my bed, and watch really-bad-tv on my laptop. Which, incidentally, is one of my very-favorite-things. However, I knew if I didn’t go fabric shopping after work, there was no way it was going to happen that weekend. It was slated to be pretty yucky outside, and I was walking. If I didn’t go then, our closet would spend one more week without a curtain. Not cool.
I therefore decided to suck it up, and go for a freezing cold walk over to Queen Street West, where I had my heart set on finding gray striped fabric. I’ve not had much luck online in finding a nice, pale, gray striped fabric, so I was a little concerned that I would be spending the next couple of hours in a futile hunt for my dream curtain. Especially given the type of day I had had so far.
However, my luck was about to turn around. King Textiles, stop number 1, had the fabric of my dreams. Perfect hued gray and white stripes. Perfect type of fabric. Perfect width. Sure, maybe it was just ok-priced at $7.99 per yard (I was hoping for a steal), and sure it may have been one of the last fabrics I came across in the huge store, but still… I found the perfect fabric in store number 1? Awesome. Bonus points for me! 2.25 yards set me back about $20 including tax.
Then it was off to another fabric store to pick up some hem tape (aka hem sealer). I have no sewing machine in Toronto, so I thought I would try to hem my curtains using hem tape a la Sherry of Young House Love. Until I learned of this magical hem tape on YHL, I had never heard of it. This will change my 5’1″ life! No more $15 hemming… on every single pair of pants I buy … for me! Even better, it cost only $1.99 for 11 yards. 11 YARDS. Do you know how many pants I can hem with 11 yards?! Lots, that’s how many. Even more cause skinny pants are so in style. (Scratch that – I learned today that it’s all about the flare this season. I guess that 11 yards doesn’t take me quite as far as anticipated.) In any event, with a hop in my step, I set off to find the last remaining item. A curtain rod. I found a sweet, cheap, spring curtain rod at Canadian Tire for $4.99. Perfect.
A grant total of $27.58 later, and I was ready to wake up Saturday morning and make me a curtain! It’s pretty simple to use hem tape and to “hem” your curtain, and boy do I ever highly recommended this over sewing. It’s so easy, and so fast! Wanna know how? Well, I am here to tell you! (Left to right)
- Purchase world’s most perfect fabric and hem tape.
- Iron your curtain, and then iron a crease into where you will want a hem (although I know you are very excited about using the hem tape, don’t use it just quite yet).
- Now, the fun part. Cut out a piece of hem tape big enough for your project, and place it into the crease.
- Dampen a wash cloth, lie it over the fold, and iron for 15-20 seconds along the whole hem.
- View your amazing handiwork.
- Cut itty bitty holes in your curtain for hanging (provided you have a skinny curtain rod) because you are too cheap to buy hooks, and hey, no one is going to see it anyways!
After that, install the curtain rod and hang your curtain (all of these steps would have required a photographer other than me, he was sleeping, sorry!) and voila a pretty, elegant, and user-friendly solution.
Looks good hey? The hubs was very surprised. He thought my whole “replacing the mirrored closet door with a piece of fabric” idea was a little on the kooky side. But, after waking up to a brand new closet door (that’s how fast and easy it was, I did it while he was sleeping – that’s what she said) he was singing my praises. And so was I.
Now all we need is a little art over that horrible birch effect dresser… And maybe a little bit of paint on that horrible birch effect dresser… and we are good to go!
*You may have noticed my “new style” of posting images. I haven’t officially decided if it is for me, and it takes a heck of a lot longer. But it does look a little more polished. Thanks so much to Pugly Pixels for the free(!!) tape strip images. And the really sweet tutorial. It was awesome! Hopefully, my use of funky photoshop things will just get better with time.