Window treatments

[swifty]

I have lived in my house for nearly a year now and my house is filled with cottage furniture and fun antiques BUT my windows are completely bare! I dislike curtains you can buy off the shelf but do not have the money to buy custom treatments. Does anyone know where I can find cheap yet unique window treatments with a country style?

[Karinbob]

I bought the white sheer panels at Target really cheap and they look amazing. Because they are sheer they look like I am at a beach house especially when the window is open and a slight breeze hits them. I have never used sheers before and I really like how they look. I got them on sale for about 10.00 a pair! I also have a Ralph Lauren floral sheet that I made a simple curtain out of hanging on either side of them as well. It just says spring! Even my husband likes them. I think it creates a soft romantic/cottagey mood. Hope that helps.

[Lisa S]

At this very moment, I'm taking a break from making curtains for my kid's rooms. I'm a horrible seamstress, but I don't mind makinging simple curtains.

We've been in our house 3 years and at this point we only have shutters at most of the windows. I detest store bought curtains... they always seem to use inexpensive fabric. I've decided that I can handle the curtains for the bedrooms and our sunroom. I'll design the curtains for the living room and dining room, buy the fabric, but then take them to a GOOD seamstress to have them made.

I agree ~ the right curtains are important to the overall look of a room, but good ones are hard/impossible/outrageously priced to find at a store.

Good Luck!

[Lisa S]

Karinbob ~

I bought the curtains for our bedroom from Target too, (I swear, the ONLY curtains in the whole house!). They were a nice heavy material, but the pocket was extra wide. I just ran another seam and made the pocket smaller and I really like the way they look.

The curtains for the kid's room are made from some lovely searsucker fabric that I bought on clearance. I'm lining them with some cheap-o curtains that I bought and hated. The new curtains are looking cute... and it makes me happy using a mistake purchase to make something nice.

[Karinbob]

Lisa,
Don't you just love Target! I can always find something there that I can use. I ususally sew all my curtains myself but, that can sometimes be expensive if you don't like how something turns out and you spent all that time as well!:( I do have to say if you can sew you can make some cool things. In my kitchen I made the valances and in my kithen/dinning area I made some Roman shades and they turned out great! I saved some serious money making them myself. Hope you find a great seamstress to help you out. K

[Lisa S]

I hate to sound like a Target ad, but they carry the some really neat, trendy stuff that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I don't mind putting my money where it counts: good Oriental rugs, real wood furniture, a solid house... but I hate spending loads of it on the trendy or something I'll change in a year or two.

Got one curtain down... on to number two. (I'm really stink at this!)

[sararose]

Sometimes you can find good deals on Ebay. I bought a few sets of Pottery Barn velvet drapes and sheers there for 1/3 of the usual price, then took them to be altered (by a horrible tailor--I could have done an equally bad job for free! They still look good though--luckily they reach the floor, so it's hard to tell they are all different lengths :mad: )

Another option is to buy good quality flat sheets in stripes or florals and hand sew drapery rings onto them.

Or, if you can't sew but have pretty good taste, you can always look for vintage custom drapes on Ebay. (This works for some people, but it never has for me. I've never been good at guessing what will look good in my house until it's too late.)

[Lynzee]

I tried to find curtains for months but never found anything I thought was unique and "cottagy", so I am making all of the curtains for my house, too--primarily because I have 44 windows (many that are 92" from the top to the floor) which puts buying curtains (even if I could find some I like) way beyond my budget. I bought every 180 thread count, flat white sheet they had at Wal-Mart when they were on sale and am making tie up "shades" for each window, using white organdy ribbon as ties. I'm not a seamstress, so the fact that a lot of the sewing had already been done for me (as well as the relatively low cost) made going this route very attractive! I love the look--they're light and airy and very "cottagy"!

Lynzee

[Lisa S]

Send pictures! I really, really need some inspiration!

Not having a lot of fun sewing... Why is it that the BLACK cat with the LONG fur likes to lay on my white sewing projects? Why is it that my kids need 80% more Kool Aid when I'm trying to be artistic? Why, why, why!?

[Lynzee]

It's so you can be so much more proud of the project when you're finished. Just think of the stories you'll be able to tell about the things that happened to those curtains while you were making them. :D

Here are the pictures. Sewing is definitely not my strong suit, so I usually don't even try, but I sure couldn't afford curtains for all of my windows either. Like I told my husband, they may not be perfect but I am really proud of them! Especially since I only sewed my finger once! :eek:

Good luck!

:)
Lynz

[Lisa S]

They look great ~ good job! I've been intimidated by roman shades before. Where they difficult?

You sew like me if you’re sewing up your fingers. Well... I have one curtain done and the other is almost there... I really need ignore the computer!

Thanks for showing me the pictures.

[Kathy Ann]

You could also sew little rings onto dish towels or old aprons or linens from a flea market. One year I took sheers outside and put them down, one section at a time, onto paper towels. Them I put violets and bluets onto the curtain, another paper towel, and pounded with a flat rock. The flowers printed right onto the curtain. I heat-set it with an iron and I washed them with Woolite. I'd send a picture but my sister loved them so much I gave them to her!

[Lynzee]

Thanks, Lisa. The most difficult part for me is measuring and cutting because I don't have a surface large enough to spread a sheet out flat. All of the sewing is just straight seams--which is great considering I still have 34 more to go!

How is your second one coming? And when can we expect pictures?

:)
Lynz

[swifty]

Thanks for all of your advise! I found two shower curtains at T.J. Maxx, god bless discount stores, in a soft flower toile fabric, I thought wow, why doesnt everybody use shower curtains on their windows!? Well, I got them home and realized they were too short for the panels I wanted to use them for. Then I thought I would add a cordinating fabric on the bottom to lengthen it and use a ribbon trim or maybe pom-pom's to hide the seam. I will post pictures...well if they look good anyways.

[Lisa S]

You go Swifty girl ~ Great ideas! I'm gonna clean my house and then get started on my curtains again today. I've gotta paint the kids room first, but then I'll take pictures too.

Maybe I'll head over to TJ Maxx...

[Lady of the Lake]

....weighs in :) The best deals in fabric are at stores like Marshals, T.J. Maxx, Target, Ross, Steinmart, etc. Clearance racks give you the most bang for the buck and no one has to keep the style. Remember the trend now is to mix patterns. Just keep a constant color scheme...try to vary the sizes of your patterns....then go wild. I just bought 2 Hickory Hills Grandma's Attic couchs that have 4 different fabrics on them...dark red is the background color with greens and golds in the patterns.........I'm mixing that with black and natural toile curtains.......bamboo shades in fruitwood....wrought iron......and painted wood. This will all go in my new great room..............move in date the end of April........I'll send pictures when finished :)

[Lisa S]

Thanks for the advise. Your cabin sounds wonderful ~ you bet we want to see the pictures!

When I was a kid, we would go camping at Cook Forest in PA. Have you been there?

[Soleil]

I used a matelasse coverlet to make curtains for my LR. I found some at Target, but they were too short. I bought 2 king size coverlets from TJ Maxx for $29.99 each. Cut them in half and finished the unfinished edge. I have them hanging from curtain rings. They work great, and are 96 inches long, so they don't hang 6 inches from my floor like the store boughts. The fabric is fairly heavy and hangs very well. The ones I chose didn't have a scalloped edge, but they would be cute with the scalloped edge as well.

I want linen curtains for my bedroom redo. I will be purchasing the Solgull curtains from Ikea. They have a beautiful hemstitched edge and are 57" wide and 118" long...I'll need to hem them! A pair costs $39. They are gorgeous and airy.

Soleil

[Lisa S]

Smart gal ~ they sound really nice!

[Cellogirl]

For 2 small casement bathroom windows, I got some antique-looking kitchen towels from the Shabby Chic line at Target (I LOVE Target...think their corporate office knows how popular they are among us CL readers?). Took 2 towels for each window and made an intentional-looking pleat where they meet up to get the length I needed. Sewed a large open hem for the top and put a tension rod through.
Now, one more off-beat idea: Quilts as window coverings. I used to have an old apartment with windows that were 116" wide and 50" long (not a typo!). They got full sun and made the room beastly hot in the summer. The previous tenants used full-length heavy velvet curtains -- not my style. But I found 2 queen-sized quilts on sale at Kohl's and put the J-hook style drapery pins through one long edge of each quilt, forming pleats by the pinning. Hung the hooks over a flat traverse-style drapery rod. Ta-da! The heavy quilts blocked the sun, plus the pattern was charming -- and NO sewing!

[Lady of the Lake]

Very clever Cellogirl! That's an awful lot of weight on the rods. How did you fasten the rods to the wall? Did you use a heavry duty anchor of some sort?

Target does have a great group of buyers. I've been snapping up some of their vintage and kiche tea towels to make purses out of...I made a cute Hawaian one that never even made it to my website.

[alliegato]

Hi there,

My new place has windows that are 95 inches long! Was hoping to use a tension rod so I wouldn't have to make any holes in the wall (am renting), but I can seem to find anywhere that carries them that long?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

~Allie