Chevron Curtains

I'm so super proud of my curtains for the nursery! I'm not gonna lie, there was a time during the process that I was worried, but I love how they turned out.

I'm kinda obsessed with chevron these days, and thought some blue chevron curtains would go well with my orange chevron bumper. But, after searching every fabric store around here and the internet, I decided that there was no such fabric to make these curtains as I envisioned. So, back to the internet, I searched different ways of created chevron curtains. I thought about buying this fabric from Home Fabrics and cutting strips of fabric in 45 degree angles and sewing them together to get the zig zags. That thought lasted only a minute when I realized how much time and money that would be! 

So I continued my search. I found this little blog with an awesome idea on it... Paint the curtains! I found some plain white thick curtains at Target for $18 and I ran to Lowe's with Chase and picked up a sample bottle of bright blue paint. It was $3. Sweet. Then I recruited the amazing Kara and off we went!

We ironed a crease in the middle of each panel, and folded the edges back to the middle crease and creased them again. That way we had three vertical creases so we knew where the points where supposed to be. After some failed attempts at math (several failed attempts) we finally figured out where we wanted the stripes. I wanted three thick stripes on each panel, so we taped the curtains with blue painter's tape. Then the painting began!

There's me and my pregnant self painting inside the tape. We used foam brushes and Kara instructed me to dab the paint around the tape lines to get crisp, straight lines. We finished one panel and put it outside to dry while working on the other. We ran out of paint with about 1/4 of the bottom stripe not done. No worries, we ran to Lowe's and $3 later we were back in business!

The paint dried super fast, and we were ready to do another coat on the first panel after we finished the second one. The second coat was much needed, otherwise the blue stripes were see-through and blotchy. It only took about 2 hours or so to paint both coats on the curtains. After we were done, I laid them out (one in Bailey's room and one in Bennett's room, thanks brothers!) and let them dry completely for a couple of days. I got them yesterday and with the help of the hubby, we hung them up! There is this super awesome metal framing that goes all the way around the windows so drilling holes for the rod was impossible. We had to improvise and we finally got it to work.

Here are the curtains in all their glory!

I heart them. The window is really small and right up against the corner of the wall on the left side, so the curtains take up the entire window.  They look way better hanging straight down rather than using tie backs, so I'm going to get a longer rod and open it up a bit. Even though the curtains won't necessarily frame the window in the center, I think it will look better. I'll put another picture up when I change out the rod.

The lines turned out crisp and straight (except if you look really close in a couple of places, but don't tell). I think they turned out great! So I spent $24 on custom, one-of-a-kind curtains for the baby's room. They already make the room look better! I'm excited to see how everything turns out, but I have many more things to do before that happens.

Next up: finishing the darn tiger rug if I can get the sewing machine to cooperate and recovering the white crib bumper with orange chevron fabric. Hopefully I'll make progress on at least one of those today!