Where to begin – while I absolutely love this door in my dining room and the light that it lets in, I have to admit when I’m trying to watch TV it shines through the glass with the force of a thousand angry suns and illuminates the whole room. Not wanting to have to don my finest sunglasses while lounging on the sofa to keep from being blinded I set out with the idea that I could make a curtain for free with items I already had around my house. After 4 hours of hard work and a few music breaks here and there, my curtain was finally complete and the sun was no longer my mortal enemy.
I first began by taking measurements of the window opening. Then I set on a quest to find the perfect neutral fabric from my scrap pile.
Once I found the fabric I wanted to use (Canvas drop cloth to the rescue!) I spread it out on my dining room floor and began marking where I needed to cut it. I ended up going with 76 inches long by 24 inches wide to account for my seam allowance.
Ok ya’ll when I say I used my favorite scissors in the entire world to cut the fabric I am not exaggerating. I found these at Aldi and they were under $10.00. I’m confident that if anyone were to ever break into my house I’d grab them to use for self defense they are that sharp and a huge plus is they glide through fabric like butter. I then grabbed my iron and went to town annihilating each and every visible wrinkle. This step probably took a solid 10 minutes to complete (or at least it felt like it). Being too lazy to measure an inch all the way around the sides of my fabric I came to the realization that I had a paint stirrer stick in my garage that fit those exact dimensions so I used it as a guide to mark where I’d need to fold my seams.
I’m currently in a feud with my sewing machine’s bobbin so I decided to go with something that wouldn’t make me want to rip my hair out and scream profanities every 5 minutes while trying to troubleshooting the issue. That’s where my beloved iron on hem adhesive comes in to play. This stuff is magic and I’m glad that I remembered there was some leftover in my crafting closet. I pinned the adhesive between the fabric creating a sharp seam and then began to iron for what felt like longer than 10 minutes this time.
Now was time for the fun part – looking for scrap wood that I could use to hang the curtain and make some sort of dowel with to give it some weight at the bottom. I settled on a piece of scrap lattice wood strip and cut it to size. I then placed one piece at the bottom of my curtain and once again pinned down my trusty iron on hem adhesive.
I folded the bottom of my fabric over the cut lattice wood strip like a burrito and ironed the hem adhesive secure. I then grabbed the other piece of wood I cut and stained the outer sides of it (in the haste of fighting my cat that was chewing on the iron cord I did not get a picture of this step)
Next I placed the stained lattice board towards the backside of the top of the curtain, applied a generous amount of E6000 on it and rolled the fabric over like a burrito again (can you tell I’m hungry as I type this?). Something about this curtain was looking too plain to me so I searched through my craft closet for anything I could use that would give it a little pizzazz. That’s when I spotted it – a bronzed square brad that would be the perfect addition to the ends of the wood that were sticking out from the curtain. I adhered one on each side with E6000 and then began the next step of my curtain project.
Now I was nearing the finish line and all I had left to do was create some straps to hold my curtain in place during the times I actually wanted the light to shine through the window. I cut two 30 inch long strips that were each 2 inches wide, sandwiched some hem adhesive between them, pinned them down and then once again ironed them closed.
After all of the ironing was finished I added some Velcro to each end of the straps. It was at this point of the DIY where I started getting squirrely and thought it would be a good idea to also use Velcro to adhere the curtain to my door – it was not. It looked good for about 15 minutes then came crashing down onto the floor with one of the loudest bangs I’ve heard in my entire life.
To make sure that my curtain wasn’t going anywhere I screwed it into the door. That in itself was a difficult task that took some Macgyvering. Have you tried drilling through a metal door while balancing on a kitchen chair for dear life? Some heart palpitations were had and many Hail Mary’s were thrown in the process.
If anyone needs me I’ll be binge watching Prodigal Son (Are you as heartbroken as I am that it was cancelled?) in the dark while occasionally glancing back at my finished curtain with the biggest smile on my face
Angeldwnsouth 