#58- We All Live in a Yellow...

Perhaps its the springtime, which has FINALLY come after a punishingly long winter this year, or the pops of color that seem to decorate all my favorite stores, but I've been yellow inspired lately. Our Guest Bedroom reaping the rewards, as you can see in this throw pillow post and this memo board post. So the next step was to find some beautiful, modern, patterned curtains to brighten up the space. Surprisingly, they are incredibly difficult to find in my favorite home decor stores though, so I found myself searching local fabric stores to make my own. Strike 2. At least at the national chain fabric stores in my area, as well as my fav discount fabric warehouse Mill End, there is no geometric, bright yellow patterns to be found. Boo. Thank the Lord for online fabric stores such as Fabric.com which had all of these beauties to choose from:

Really, I could win with any of these, but I especially love DU-790 and DU-217. (UR-988 is by far my favorite pattern, but I wish the beige was more white to work with the white duvet and trim.) All of these fabrics have about a $10-$15/yard price tag though (plus shipping), which is a little steep considering I'll need just short of 6 yards. So as I pondered my options, I stopped into Target one day, and passed this little bad boy on the end cap:

No, it's not a curtain, it's a 60" x 84" tablecloth, but all I saw was a 2 1/3 yard piece of interior width fabric, for only $9.99. (Which is about $4.30 a yard.) I scored 2 of these guys, plus a matching set of cloth napkins (just in case) for a total of $24.99.

The window in my Guest Bedroom is 7 feet wide, so two 60" panels will be perfect to close completely and still drape nicely in front of them. The 84" tall isn't so perfect however, as I'd really like my curtains to be 94" tall so that they fill the wall and make the windows look bigger. I figured that this busy pattern, all the way floor to ceiling might be a bit much anyway though. A little too much party and not enough polish. So I planned to top them with a crisp white to make them look more stately, sort of like this.

So I took a quick trip back to Mill End, and picked up 3 yards of bright white broadcloth and some more white thread for just $4.87. I know, big spender, right? The fabric was cheap because it was in the remnants section, which really just means that's it's from the end of a bolt, and isn't folded and wrapped nicely. I figured I could just wash and iron the fabric (which you should do before any sewing project anyway.) In retrospect, I'm not sure it was worth the savings, because I ended up spending nearly a full, sucky hour ironing this hot mess:

I was Cinderella, slaving over my hot iron. (That is if Cinderella could also drink a glass of wine and watch American Idol as she worked.) I basically followed the same steps as I did to make the curtains in this post, and got this:

The next step was to trim for length, which I always find so much easier to do as they are hanging. I just pin the hem to the right length, and then iron it with hem tape.

And after a little furniture rearranging and picture hanging, we had this:

What do you think? I'm actually thrilled with the way that the fabric softly drapes, even though these are made of outdoor tablecloths. And now, for the first time, I am realizing the major flaw in this little blog endeavor. I'll no longer be fooling anyone that comes to my house that it is furnished with nice, expensive things. I just flat out told the world that I have tablecloths for curtains. Cheap tablecloths at that. Oh well, small price to pay I guess for the outlet of sharing my triumphs (and more often frustrations) in DIY. You all knew I was a thriftster anyway. Not sure I was fooling anyone. :) We still have a little more accessorizing work to do in this room once those boxes are finally out of the garage and unpacked, but for right now, we'll call it a success!