Sitting On the Dock of the Bay...

hi and hello there.

WOW.. I have been a beyond awful blogger but man I JUST HAVEN'T BEEN IN THE MOOD.. School started for my daughter this year.. Shes in Kindergarten.. SO CUTE..
    Anxiety struck for me and its been a rough few weeks. However I'm coming out of it so that's what matters..

ALSO I felt like.. I haven't done anything. I don't even know what to blog about..
Then yesterday as I was cleaning photos off on my phone I saw 4-5 projects worth of pictures. WOO TO THE HOO for stuff to blog about..

Today I'm going to share my Bay window Curtains with you.. MAN OH MAN.. this has been a spot in my house that has been a bane of my existence for almost 2 years..
Its a beautiful place for a large window area.. it really is.. Its on the front of the house.. Its where we put our Christmas tree, its where we sit most of the time as the couch is right there.. however it was a major drag in the Esthetics's Department..



For 2 years I have been trying to decide.. WHAT KIND OF CURTAINS do I put there?
I kept thinking nice LONG curtains, but its really the only source of natural light in the room and I felt longer curtains would be to bulky and hide light.

ALSO I could never find a pattern or color I liked in the room..

ENTER PINTEREST..

I did a DIY curtain search and found this GEM of a pin that gave me an easy tutorial for DIY striped curtains..





STRIPED CURTAINS

I also found a super cute style of curtain called.. "Cafe Curtains" where only half the window has a curtain on it.. they generally have a clip of some sort as opposed to SLIDING the top hemmed piece of the curtain onto the rod.. I decided, WHY NOT? combine the 2 ideas and go to town..







Sounds easy enough right? Ya, not so much as I have NO CLUE how to sew.. even though the striped curtain link is a new sew, what happens when you are not already using existing curtains that are already nicely hemmed for your stripes like the gal on the blog..

ENTER my momma..

My sister was nice enough to loan me a sewing machine.. SO my mom brought some scraps of fabric.. sat me down.. showed me from start to finish how to set up the machine (which I forgot very quickly) and I worked on basic sewing.. Once we had that down.. we went to town on the curtains.

I was able to pick up all my fabric and sewing needs at our local Hobby Lobby.. Cant say enough good things about this store..

We started by washing, drying and ironing all the fabric so we would have a good smooth surface to work with..

Here is my mom working on pinning off our hem for the top..

I of course was bad about taking photos once we really got going.. however we just followed the Striped Curtains gals blog on how to add the Red Stripes to my curtains. VERY easy with a fabulous product called "Stitch Witchery" no sewing involved.. just your fabrics.. and iron and a nice damp cloth..

Here is the progress on our panel.. we had to hang it up a few times to figure out where we wanted to fabric to fall.. which also determined how many stripes we could do.

NOW.. HUGE time lapse here.. I Started these curtains in the SPRING.. yes folks Spring.. as in we had ALLLL of spring.. SUMMER and now into fall..lol..

A few weeks ago I said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH I can finish these suckers without my mom.. We had all the white portions of the curtains cut, hemmed etc etc.. we had all the Red strips cut and ready to go.. I just had to stand there with the iron and assemble..lol..

Here is the finished project of  my Living room Cafe curtains.. Its nice because it deters my dog a bit from seeing things and barking out the window.. but it also adds some character to the room.. I was hell bent on the room needing paint to make any kind of statement.. but I think the curtains were a nice touch and Im feeling.. Paint isnt necessarily the answer...

So.. thats the story of the Bay window that has stumped me for 2 years.

I would really like to stress.. if you dont know how to sew or dont have a machine you can still make these curtains.. just buy a curtain panel in a solid color and add your own stripes with stitch witchery.. SUPER easy.. I was looking for super inexpensive yet cute..  I dont have reciepts but I would say all 4 panels with rods and clips and everything I needed to sew about 35-40$..(this is with my hobby lobby coupon, mom lending me a couple items and the sewing machine on load, its also cheap rods and clips from walmart.. which you cant tell..lol)  which at walmart the current cost of ONE SOLID COLOR panel is 14$.. SOOOO while it wasnt pennies, I spent far less than had I purchased these at a store..

Much Love and Blessings to you all this fine Thursday morning..