Curtains with sweet little birds for my room...

Why is it so hard to take photos of curtains - all the back-lighting.

Rental houses. Great things - living in amazing locations with minimal outlay, able to have things fixed without ongoing expenses. Bad things - having to move, often crappy things that you can't change, chronically terrible colour schemes. And I've not once lived in a rental home that has curtains either. Always blinds, cheap blinds. Yuck. And in cream or beige. Adding nothing to the character of the home, challenging to clean when we move, lifeless really.

But our current flat had one set of curtains! Ugly ones though. And a curtain rod that extends the entire length of the wall despite the window only being a quarter of the width. And four massive curtains covering the wall and the small window. What was I to do? Make some curtains of course.

I'd been eyeing this fabric off for some time. Found it featured in a design catalogue a few months ago and I'd been keen on a project to use it in. Fabric was easy to locate - from Ikea - and stupidly cheap to boot. I made sure that there was enough to cover the width of the window by at least double, and then added some more on for good measure. Full curtains require significantly more fabric, but with such thin fabric I really didn't think it was needed. All it took was the sewing room/study being cleared of boxes and some table surface being found. Then a day off, some good tunes and a pair of curtains was made. Hurrah! The tab tops were a little bit of work, but nothing taxing. Just some ironing and folding and pinning before sewing carefully. I was lazy and didn't remove the selvages as I thought this would be the easiest way to ensure a straight edge on them.

I have hung them in order for the fabric to drop before hemming. Now I just need to have time to finish them off, as they have been hanging so they drop for over two weeks! Ops...

How sweet is this fabric? How lovely is it against the beautiful plain trees on the street? I love that the fabric is soft and thin and simply defuses the light. No blocking out of the sun in my room if you please. And the simply illustrated images of those birds, with splodges of green... Can you tell I spent a few hours looking at this fabric fondly while sewing?

It was a real joy to make these curtains and consequently to make my rental flat feel like it is my home! It also made me long for the day when I can paint walls to match the curtains if I choose.

The tab tops while being pressed and sewn into place.