Frugal curtains

[miss_thenorth]

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[heatherv]

YES!!!! I have done this!

When we lived in FL and had an addition put on our house I used sheets and peel 'n stick velcro. The sheets were barely used, and from a bed we no longer had. The velcro we got for free, someone left huge rolls of it behind at DH's work. It worked great, and when we moved we just peeled off the velcro, it was too easy.

 

[Woodland Woman]

I'm impressed! That's a lot of windows! I don't sew much myself anymore. My grandmother always used to help me with the machine setting up the thread and such but after she passed away I wasn't able to figure out how to change thread.

 

[EweSheep]

Some of us dont sew so those clip on posts would do us a pinch and whats better, you can change the colors or needed to clean them up by unclipping them and throw them in washer.

Great ideas!

 

[patandchickens]

I've hardly ever made curtains any *other* way, actually -- and I will warn anyone else reading this and thinking about trying the same thing that you have to be PICKY about what sheets you use, because inexpensive ones, or good-quality but old ones from thrift stores, are sometimes so crooked or uneven or locally-saggy as to make it difficult to impossible to make things acceptibly even and square. This is especially true after new sheets, that appear square and true, are washed Possibly if you buy high-quality new sheets it may not be as much of a problem but I would not know as I have never paid more than $5 per sheet from Sally Ann or etc

Miss_theNorth, if you are having heat gain problems then I would heartily recommend the minor investment of some blackout material from the fabric store, to make a second layer to put behind (on window side) of your 'regular' curtains. It is AMAZING how much less heat gets thru to the room that way. It will also help keep the house warmer in winter btw. I forget exactly how much I spent to do our 10' bow window and sliding glass doors, but it was really not very much at all. The easiest way to attach it (assuming you are using slip-in drapery hooks) is to also buy the [very cheap] tape that you sew along the top of the blackout fabric, that has loops that you can hook over the drapery hooks. It is incredibly simple, you do not even need to hem or anything b/c the blackout fabric does not ravel!

Another really really handy solution, if it fits your house's situation, is to buy shadecloth from a garden center and rig a way to put it on the outside of the windows. I have a long piece that covers the bottom 1/2 of the bay window, held in place by 2 tension rods; and two big wooden frames over which it is stretched that are jammed into position on the outside of the sliding doors. Between the blackout fabric and the shadecloth you would not BELIEVE how much cooler the house is -- I myself never expected *such* a difference. Highly recommend!

Pat

 

[miss_thenorth]

I've hardly ever made curtains any *other* way, actually -- and I will warn anyone else reading this and thinking about trying the same thing that you have to be PICKY about what sheets you use, because inexpensive ones, or good-quality but old ones from thrift stores, are sometimes so crooked or uneven or locally-saggy as to make it difficult to impossible to make things acceptibly even and square. This is especially true after new sheets, that appear square and true, are washed Possibly if you buy high-quality new sheets it may not be as much of a problem but I would not know as I have never paid more than $5 per sheet from Sally Ann or etc

Miss_theNorth, if you are having heat gain problems then I would heartily recommend the minor investment of some blackout material from the fabric store, to make a second layer to put behind (on window side) of your 'regular' curtains. It is AMAZING how much less heat gets thru to the room that way. It will also help keep the house warmer in winter btw. I forget exactly how much I spent to do our 10' bow window and sliding glass doors, but it was really not very much at all. The easiest way to attach it (assuming you are using slip-in drapery hooks) is to also buy the [very cheap] tape that you sew along the top of the blackout fabric, that has loops that you can hook over the drapery hooks. It is incredibly simple, you do not even need to hem or anything b/c the blackout fabric does not ravel!

Another really really handy solution, if it fits your house's situation, is to buy shadecloth from a garden center and rig a way to put it on the outside of the windows. I have a long piece that covers the bottom 1/2 of the bay window, held in place by 2 tension rods; and two big wooden frames over which it is stretched that are jammed into position on the outside of the sliding doors. Between the blackout fabric and the shadecloth you would not BELIEVE how much cooler the house is -- I myself never expected *such* a difference. Highly recommend!

Pat

I looked at the blackout material, and if it ever goes on sale, it will be an easy fix to attach to my curtains. So far, I am quite impressed with the two sheets together. they have high thread count, which makes them denser, and the inside sheet is brown, where the outside one is white. I bought the curtains at Sears during the white sale, and after washing, they were perfect.

I have never had to do curtains before, as most houses we lived in had window treatments included. I am definitely hooked on sewing these types of curtains. My sewing abilities are limited, as in, I can do a straight line but not much else. But I might get creative in the kids bedrooms.


ETA, what is Sally Ann? Never heard of it... and oh yeah, there are horrible mini-blinds on the bow window that can be used for black out qualities, but I haven't used them yet. I'm not a big fan of mini blinds.....

 

[yotetrapper]

I wanting to make some HEAVY drapes for winter time. I feel sheets would be much lighter than I wanted. Any ideas on what I could make them out of?

 

[miss_thenorth]

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[patandchickens]

The key to keeping the house cool is to prevent as much light as possible from hitting the outside of the windowglass, and then isolating the inside face of the window as totally as possible from the rest of the inside of the house (not only should light not be falling on the interior of your house but ALSO air from between the drapery and the windowglass needs to be prevented as much as possible from being able to mix with the rest of the house air).

Mini-blinds don't work very well at all for this purpose, because there are so many holes and also for a bow window usually people have separate narrow blinds for each pane and thus lots and lots of heat gets thru between 'em. If you get the inexpensive 'I-beam shaped' drapery track it will actually flex enough to be mounted along the curve of the bow window so the curtains can follow the curvature and be one long pair of curtains all the way along; or you can put larger draperies on the wall above the bow window opening to achieve the same thing.

Yotetrapper, you could use a light acrylic blanket for wintertime insulation (in conjunction with your regular drapes, not alone), but honestly I don't think you're going to do much better that way than with blackout fabric. The blackout curtain fabric is pretty impervious to air trying to move through it. Used in conjunction with your 'real' drapes it also creates a dead air layer, which has a bit of insulating value as well. I seriously doubt that the 'R' value of a quarter inch of knit blanket is significantly better For wintertime make sure the drapes go alll the way to the floor, or virtually all the way and you block the gap at nighttime with a rolled up blanket or draft excluder ("door snake") or whatever.

"Sally Ann"... you know, just a nickname for Salvation Army? (I go there, as well as Goodwill, on a regular basis and am known as well at the Habitat for Humanity store, Value Village and our local hospital's thrift shop. Go ahead, call me cheap <g>)


Pat

 

[miss_thenorth]

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