Living Room Curtains

As with my other curtain projects, there were so many questions to be answered before I embarked on this project for our living room.  Our living room has two windows: one large extra-wide picture window and a standard double-hung window.  I wanted the same thing on both windows, which added an extra challenge.

Curtains, blinds, roller shades, or Roman shades?  Well, okay, blinds are automatically out because I hate them.  (I especially hate dusting them.) Operating roller shades is not my spiritual gift, and Roman shades are either super expensive if you buy them or super complicated if you make them.  So curtains were the solution.

Outside mount or inside mount?  Well, with a super wide window, inside mount would look pretty stupid, plus I wanted to let as much light through as possible, so I didn't need anything blocking the light.

Long curtains or short curtains?  I've mentioned before that long curtains just wouldn't work anywhere in my house.  However, I was actually considering them here because I just couldn't see how short curtains would work.  Until I saw this picture:

A big window over a couch - and short curtains look good!  Huzzah!  I mean, our window is only partially over a couch, but still.

After that, it was easy to decide that we wanted a plain fabric rather than something patterned, and then sage green was a simple choice.  (Honestly, we have bed sheets, towels, and a whole room in that color; that was the easy choice.)  We also decided that we wanted a thermal lining rather than a blackout lining.  We don't ever need this room to be that dark, but the big windows probably let out a lot of heat.

Okay, so sage green, thermal-lined, 6' panels (yes, that is considered short for curtains).  I knew I wanted two panels for the small window.  The big window could have been covered by three panels, but I didn't want to have two panels on one side and only one on the other, so four panels was the solution for that window.

So I did my super-Dutch-girl thing and researched the cost of making six sage-green thermal-lined curtains vs purchasing them, and making them saved us about $20 overall.  Many hours of work, a very sore back, and almost $100 in fabric later...Ta-da!

The tops are tabbed, but I also made a rod-pocket in case I ever change my mind.  I made the tabs out of extra fabric to make it look uniform.  This was a lot of extra work - not hard stuff, just tedious stuff - but worth it because it looks so nice.

I did 1" seams on the side because these are big solid panels and a big solid hem matched well.

This is what the top looks like from the front:

At the bottom, I folded in the edge of the hem so that it wouldn't stick out weirdly:

We got both curtain rods from Lowe's; they cost us about $50 all together.  It's really hard to get a good picture of curtains in natural light,  but I did my best.

And closed:

The smaller window:

Please ignore the mess.  I did just have oral surgery.  (It's an excuse for everything.)

Love and Thread,

Leah Joy

P.S. Funny story.  When I was purchasing thread for these curtains I had no idea how much to get.  I was thinking, "No way will one spool be enough, but I don't think two or three will be either."  I ended up getting four spools of thread.  I didn't even finish one of them. So, if you need sage green thread, I can hook you up. :)