Curtains in the Classroom

Tonight is my last night at home in South Carolina.  A couple months ago, I saw some super cute curtains on Pinterest that I thought would look great in a classroom.  (Picture to the right... the original site doesn't work anymore.)  They were colorful and sheer.  I had to have them...  One of my missions while I was home, was to find material to dye and turn into curtains.  Mission: accomplished; however, I can't take credit for this creation...  All I did was dye the fabric.  My mom did all of the work with this one!  Thanks, Ma!! :-)  Just so you know, there will be plenty of pictures to follow.  Half-way through the process, I thought to start taking pictures to share with the blog world.  Unfortunately, I won't have a picture of them hanging until I'm able to get back to school in August.  Womp womp womp....

First two pictures:

These two pictures show the type of fabric and the color.  I knew I wanted to find a sheer fabric in an orange color, but the only thing I could find was tulle.  There was no way in Hades that I was going to make curtains out of tulle, so I moved on to the next best idea...  Dying a sheer fabric orange.  After doing a little research on the RIT website, I decided on the color "Sunshine Orange" and learned that the fabric can be pretty much anything except polyester.  Would you like to guess what material most sheers are made out of??  Yes, polyester.  I did luck up and I found this fabric at Hobby Lobby for, I think, $4.99/yd.  The reason I really wanted to do all this while I was at home was because my parents haven't upgraded their washer/dryer to one of the HE models yet, so I figured it would be much easier to dye the fabric (since my washer puts water in according to the weight of the fabric).  Dying the fabric was super easy and I'm pretty much hooked on RIT dye.  I'm trying to think of other projects that would involve dying fabric! :)  Once the fabric was dyed, we were my mom was ready to make the curtains (after a few days of it sitting on the dining room table)!  It's pretty cool, don't you think?  I love the sparkly look!

More Pictures:

This stuff is great...  It's called Stitch Witchery.  We bought this stuff because we figured the fabric was too thin to put stitches through it.  (Actually that's a lie... I have lazy tendencies and I couldn't imagine doing that much sewing.)  The Stitch Witchery Is great!

So, basically, what you do, is lay this stuff wherever you want to make a seam.  This stuff is super thin and tears easily.  Once you have put it where you want it, you hold your steam iron over the Stitch Witchery until it becomes tacky. 

It's easiest if you pin the stuff in place before you put the iron over it.  Sometimes, it can move around with the steam.

Once it's tacky, you will want to fold the fabric over and pin it down again.

 Next, you take a damp cloth and press the fabric with the iron for 10 seconds.

After 10 seconds, this is what you have... A really nice seam!  It's pretty amazing! :-)

Now, for the loop to hang on a wire or curtain rod, we measured down 4 inches from the top seam...all the way across.  Yes, I am OCD.  At one point my mom said, "Just back up and keep your OCD away from me."  :-)  It's pretty bad...

Apply more Stitch Witchery, make tacky with the iron, and then fold/pin the fabric down like before (making sure the fabric is 2 inches all the way across).

Now let me begin by saying, I appreciate everything my mom does for me, but after working on a project with her all day, I needed the glass of wine you see off to the right.  In this picture, my mom is sewing a straight stitch (I guess you call it that) in the top seam just for a bit of insurance.  It would be my luck that the top seam would come out and I wouldn't be able to hang the curtains!  I'm not worried about the side and bottom seams.  (PS I don't know why it looks like there are black marks all over my mom's hands... they're definitely not there in person!)

Last picture:  This is a picture of my mom's great work!  Woot Woot! :-)

I am so proud of these curtains!!  We only have one set of windows in the rooms, and we have a blind, but I love natural light!  I love how curtains make a room feel really homey, so I cannot wait to get these up!  They're going to look so good!!  Again, I couldn't have done it without my mom!!  :-)

UPDATE: If you want to see the curtains in action, please click here!