Thursday, March 17, 2011

A New House—A New Sewing Project

Sharon is already looking ahead to after the remodel and has realized there are a lot of curtains to be made for the main floor windows. The stuff that the prior owner left behind is not terribly period and is also not to our taste, so she has undertaken the project to replace all these curtains. She is planning to make curtains which mount inside the windows frames (so you can see the wonderful woodwork); something along these lines.But, really, she's hoping for something more like this; we'll see how good her stenciling and/or embroidery skills turn out to be. After the triple-pleated curtains and the Roman shades, she's sure she can manage the sewing of the simple casing curtains.
From Craftsman Magazine, May 1910.
For inspiration, there are some examples by Dianne Ayers over at Textile Studios. She makes some really gorgeous curtains, but they no doubt cost a fortune. Sharon is hoping she can manage to make curtains that are nearly as nice looking. =)

Today, we received a large order of linen for this project. Several months ago, Sharon calculated how much fabric she would need for all these windows (it was 28 yards!), but she didn't get around to ordering until last week, when she got an email saying the linen was on sale. So, last week she ordered 30 yards from Fabrics-store.com.

She ended up choosing a medium weight linen in a very pale yellow color, called Krista Natural. She didn't like the bleached, it was way too white, and the natural (unbleached) colors were all too dark, so she compromised and got one that was probably bleached and then colored. Here is the linen next to a piece of white.

Sharon also bought some remnants to practice the stenciling and embroidery by making throw pillows.

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