living room redo take one

I've never really gave much thought to curtains.  I mean, I've thought about the color they should be, but that's about it.  I've always just sewed curtains for rooms out of really simple fabrics.  I remember sewing bright red curtains for my bedroom when I was 10 or 11.  I sewed these by hand, it took all night, and it was one of the first things I ever sewed.  

When Kinsey and I moved into our house (almost a year ago), we needed curtains fast because there were no blinds or such downstairs.  I headed to the fabric store and picked up some standard brown cotton and sewed them up fast.  I for some reason decided to add small red loops to the top instead of just sewing a straight line to slide the curtain rod through.  Anyhow, they served their purpose, but weren't anything fancy.  Here's an overall picture of the set-up.  

We've been wanting to get new curtains...maybe something to brighten things up a little.  Not that it's dark in our living room at all, two of our walls are orange.  So we were at the Target today and ended up in the curtain aisle.  First of all, we were a little surprise about the price.  $25+ for one panel, which means $50 for just one complete window.  Of course, compared to other places, this may seem like a bargain.  We couldn't really feel completely okay with spending $100+ just for curtains in our living room, so we were going to pass until we found a few packages with that pretty little red clearance tag.  The curtains we chose were sort of a satin finish and a light aqua color.  At first we weren't completely sure, but after comparing the hue with similar shades from on our walls, we realized it had the potential to look really, really good.  So we got four packs.


And we put them up.  No sewing.  Just slid them right through the rod like probably 95% of America does.  

Here I am sewing up a project that we'll show off tomorrow.



Now I will say, these do need ironed.  Badly.  But I couldn't wait to get them up and we only have a terribly small ironing board.  It's a tabletop one that's literally 18 inches long.  I wasn't quite feeling up to attempting that today.  So squint and pretend not to see the folded lines, and that's how the curtains look (or will look soon).

Total price for all window panels = $36