Four drapery panels all in a row!  These are finished and “in training” to hang in folds.  The other two? well, they are getting there.

The hems are still pinned on these two, but they are hanging!  Debkb alerted me to the Isabella & Max Rooms drapery tutorial, so I had a look at that.  That gave me the idea to leave the hems for last, which is working out well for me.  The tutorial also helped me with my print matching and cutting the panels, though I must say having 24 yards of fabric cut from 4 different bolts made that an interesting exercise.

Now that these are off the floor and on the windows, my bedroom overhaul is almost complete.  I’ve only got to buy some new bedding and some art to be finished with this phase.  For later–6 months or so–I hope to get an upholstered chair to sit in front of these curtains (which should by then be hemmed!), and some new lamps.

Let’s call this an evolving bedroom.

You’ll probably see one more post about these draperies because I did not hang them the way I intended to.  I hated the cheap-looking little clips, so ever-the-resourceful-seamstress, I improvised.  When I hem these last two, I’ll show you what I did about that.

Perhaps then I will have the bedding and you can see the entire room.  It’ll be a few weeks.

Right now I need to sew something fun for a change!

Tags: Bedroom, Window Treatments

After it occurred to me that I had not posted about my February sewing, I wracked my brain to remember some… besides draperies, that is.

There was this one thing completed:  a single Jalie 2805 top.  According to the date on the photo, I took its picture on Feburary 11.

So.

Besides this there were only muslins.  My McCall’s M6041 jacket, which you have seen, and Jalie 2909 Classic Women’s trousers, which you have not seen.

And for good reason.

Unlike most reports on PatternReview and around the blogosphere, my experience was less-than-fabulous.  There was not nearly enough room in the seat for me.  I made it up with no alterations, just to see if the draft and the stretch fabric could compensate for the lack of width and crotch length using the size which matched my hip measurement, which is 38.5″–I went up to the size listed for 39″ hips.

The hip was not a problem, but everything south of there was. The pattern was obviously meant for someone with smaller, perkier, … errr, well, enough of that.

Ahem.

I don’t have any more stretch wovens that I’m willing to sacrifice right now, so more experiments will have to wait.  I’m a little bummed because I got the 2908 jeans, too, imagining wonderful success with an untried pattern.

  I *do* know better.

My March sewing will probably not be any more productive than February’s.  I hope to finish those never-ending draperies.  Four are in place, blocking the moonlight, unhemmed.  There are two more to go.  The last two have to be seamed to make them wider, then sewn.  Then they all have to be hemmed and trained to hang properly.  We have a furlough day coming up on Monday, which gives me three full days to finish–provided I can work up the will to do it.

In other news, as of February 11 Mr H has made it a full year since his devastating stroke.  He’s healthy and continues to recover at a slow pace.  He’s shown renewed interest in learning to speak again, so I’m trying to work with him as much as he’ll let me.  I’m hoping that one day he’ll agree to go back to the speech therapist, but that will have to be his choice.  I feel privileged to have seen first hand the miraculous healing up to now, and I’m excited to see what will occur in the coming year.  God is good.

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Saturday went to draperies.

Crawl around on the floor.
Climb up.
Climb down.
Reach up.
Look up.
Hold your arms up.
Clip that.
Unhook this.
Pin up.
Look up.
Hold your arms up. …

Needless to say, on Sunday my neck hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurt, and my knees hurt.

<<sigh>>

Sunday I did not work on draperies.   After church I napped, shopped a little, and worked on organizing the sewing room.  I stepped over the cut draperies on the floor, and I might have kicked them toward the wall a little…

My first shopping stop was Lowe’s to get some more drapery rings.  While I was there, I looked around for some organization helpers.  Sue gave me a great idea for storing my rulers when she said she used a 5 lb popcorn tin for hers.  I was fresh out of popcorn tins, but I found this big bucket (made in the USA, too!) which should work.  It’s heavy and half the price of the metal trashcan I was considering at first.  I’ll leave the tags on until I decide:

They also had some of those magnetic tool holder bars and hook strips.  I got two of the magnetic bars and one of the hook strips.  One of the magnets will go on the wall behind the machines.  The other two will be strategically placed when I settle on my table positioning–after the expo.  For now, I’ll let them wait in the bucket with the rulers.

The last two things I found should help with two things that are a lot of trouble to store:  Thread and buttons.  I got a clear plastic shoe bag to hold my thread and a parts cabinet to store my buttons:

I had been storing both of these items in bins, sorted by color in plastic bags.  That worked, but it meant I had to dig through the bin until I found the color I wanted. Plus the bins took up a lot of space themselves.

When I sorted through my serger threads, I found a lot of odd spools that I’ll never use.  Goodwill.  I also realized that there are a few colors that I won’t need to replace in the event that I ever use them up.  Light pink?? Cream??  Gray??

The gray is almost gone.  I’ve been using a serger for 20 years, and I know I’ve had that light pink all this time.

Does polyester thread rot?  Hmm.  Maybe I should just throw them out.

As for the buttons, I went through all of them–the ones I had sorted, plus all the other unsorted jars and coffee cans.  I only kept the ones I thought I might use in a couple of lifetimes.    I kept most of the shirt buttons and buttons for pants waistbands.  I let all the partial packages of buttons to cover go to Goodwill, along with all the metal buttons, and OOAK buttons.  There remain a few pretties that I like to hold in my hand.

All of them fit with room to spare in the pretty red bin.

The bins are stackable, and I’ve been using one with smaller drawers for presser feet and bobbins for several years.  Another might be useful for purse findings.

I’m still trying to decide about the embroidery machine and all its accoutrements.  I haven’t used it in two years, and I might not ever use it again.  It takes up a lot of space for something that isn’t earning its keep.  Craig might get that for his list any day now.

It’s feeling good to have breathing room in here!

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No doubt I’ve made every ridiculous mistake I could make on this.  (I didn’t cut it too short, however, which is a miracle in itself.)  I’m using directions from eHow on How to Sew Lined Drapery Panels which I found to be easy to understand–even without photos.  My headers and hems are 8 inches, rather than the 14 and 10 that they recommend because I used another set of directions to estimate my yardage.

I’ll takes some photos of the process on the next panel or two.

What should have been a simple 1 hour job morphed into 3 or 4 what with my not cutting off the selvages as directed, and having to rip the resulting wonky seams. Then, I measured wrong and cut my lining too wide so that I had to rip a side seam to cut some more off.

Primarily the trouble is that the thing is *huge*.  My finished panels are 91 inches long–that’s me with somebody’s toddler standing on my head.  There’s no table in my house that will hold it, so I have to measure and slide, measure and slide.

That’s just asking for trouble.

Unless I lay the thing on the floor, I can’t smooth it out, either.  It was beastly to get the sides pressed evenly.  They are pinned at this point, and I’m not sure how I want to stitch them in place.  The directions say to use a straight stitch, but I’m still waffling on whether or not I want that on my drapes.

When I finally called it quits last night at 7, I had to hang it to see how things were looking.

Not bad!

The little clips just looked tacky when I clipped them to the top of the plain panel, though.  Fortunately I remembered reading a tip at Thrifty Decor Chick about clipping the clips a little lower to make them look more “luxurious” on the window.

So I tried it, and it looks much better!

Before I finish this one I will experiment with my header length to try to make these brush the floor. (There will be no puddling on the floor, as my vacuum cleaner would no doubt snatch them off the windows when I was not paying attention.)  I do like the high mount for the drapery rod, and I think the color picks up the colors of the furniture very nicely.

Even at this stage I can tell that my bedroom will be very dark at night with these installed!

Tags: Bedroom, Window Treatments

I’m so excited.  I’m going, ahem, make that making plans to go to the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo in Atlanta this year.   I didn’t go last year because of Mr H’s stroke.  I didn’t go the year before that because my knees were too inflamed to walk around that much.

This year I feel good and Mr H feels good, so I’ve registered for classes on Thursday and Saturday.  (Driving over there twice in one week is enough!)

It was hard to narrow down my choices.  I wanted to do some home dec stuff, but when I saw the fitting workshops, I had to go for those.  So I’m taking

1. The Gap! with Peggy Sagers
2. Win the Battle of the Butt with Lorraine Henry
3. Jackets: Shortcuts to Classic Tailoring with Kathy Ruddy
4. Fit: Measure Like a Master with Lorraine Henry
5. Pattern Alteration Principles and Procedures with Lorraine Henry

I’ve got to get those bedroom draperies cleared out of my space between now and then.  I don’t want them hindering progress when I’m back home ready to try out my new skills.  That gives me almost 3 weeks.

I’d better get started…

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