Family Buzz: New Living Room Curtains

Here is a picture of our living room from the listing. You will notice the old brown curtains and the carpet. The carpet was the first thing to go. That involved one month of restoration to the hard wood and another story!

The sheers are getting yellow and torn in a few spots. My mother DID NOT like my curtains and insisted we redo them. Don't worry, this is a picture from the old owners. But I am sure her couches are in better condition than mine.

I had taken down the looped curtains and left the box bare. The black strip you see on top is Velcro.
The box has matching wallpaper on it. The wallpaper is not too prominent, so we could live with it in the meantime. My boys played in the curtains so I did not care if they ripped. Now that we are redoing them it will hurt more if they are torn.

As you can see the window is MASSIVE. I checked at Fabricville and curtain fabric STARTS AT $25 per meter. The span is 12 feet, the sheers are French pleats, ughh. I live just off the Island of Montreal. Now where can i buy cheap fabric? Hummm.... Let me think. I know! Chabanel and St-Laurence street!

We picked up great lined fabric for $3 a meter! Happy dance. The sheers were $5 a meter.

At Canada Asia Threads we bought matching thread at $1.50 a cone. My LORD! This store has every imaginable color. It is soooo cool!

On an unrelated note, I picked up a WHOLE ROLL of elastic for guess how much???? $4! OMG!

My curtains do not have the 4 prongs that I see on the internet. They have one hook. If we take down the sheers and look closer you will see that they have an interfacing in them at the top.

The top is nice and sturdy, even after (what I can assume) is more than 20 years. We inherited all the window treatments. I think the previous owner did a lot of the work herself. They were done very well, mind you.

You can see the 3- 1 inch folds. They are sewed along the sides of the folds and on the bottom.

Instead of buying new clips and using the interfacing that has strings that you pull, we will follow this method. We went back to 99 Chabanel on the fourth floor. There were several places that sold the Drapery interfacing, the string method and the plain interfacing. They both sold it for $0 per meter.

Simon wanted to put piping along the top and bottom of the valance and he also wanted Codelle to pad the valance. Off to St-Hubert street we go. We got 1 inch cording for $1.50 per meter at Ultratext and the padding (which cost $20 for for 2 meters) at Sam Textiles / Draperies Saratex.

We started off by serging the edges of the material. Simon wanted to use the edging foot from the Janome but I assured him it would be MUCH faster to use the Serger. I mean, that is why I bought the machine and all those serger cones, no? It produced a great result and Simon picked out the perfect color. He really is excellent at choosing colors.

Now for sewing the material for the Valance. My Janome 8200 makes superb invisible seams. Simon read the manual, took a scrap piece of material and Voila! Easy-Peasy.
This project overtook our basement. Thank Goodness we have folding tables and SPACE!

The piping was a good idea. It adds definition and a touch of professionalism to the project. It did not cost much more for the cording and we used the balance of the material cut from the Valance. It just took a lot longer to make.

I think the effort was worth it. There is about an inch tucked under that you don't see in this picture. The material is used to staple the material on to the valance on the top and the bottom.

We bought the Codelle padding to wrap the box in.

Tell a man he can use his power tools and he is a Happy Man Indeed! Add to that special staples and and air compressor gun, and he is ready set go!

I put in my ear plugs. This was a loud project.

Here you can see how we attached the piping.

There will be side panels that are stationary as well as sheer curtains. The box already had the track for the shears. We added a towel rack to hold the curtains. Simon installed to hooks to keep the side panel curtains in place. I am not sure how that will work, but he knows what he is doing. He even bought a grommet set.