Not As Planned

Back here I took suggestions on which way to hang the kitchen curtains I was making from a tablecloth.

Border down (with more fabric showing in the final).

The voting was even including people who read the blog post and told me their preference privately. I decided border down made more sense to me and I wouldn’t have to finish the long cut edge.

Making curtains requires a lot of ironing.

I had taken my measurement for the bump-out wall from the original plans. (I didn’t actually measure it.)  On the plans the long window was 110 inches so I ordered the 108-inch tablecloth.

98 inches from corner to corner.

In actuality the width was 98 inches — 8 feet exactly plus an inch on each side. This meant I could use one 8-foot 1 by 2 to hold the fabric up. But now I had about 12 inches of extra fabric to account for.

The pleat made the design repeat look awkward.

First I tried to put a pleat above the stile that separated the large window from the two smaller ones.  Unfortunately the pleats didn’t fall in a spot that enhanced the design repetition.

The pleat was in the correct placement but looked haphazard.

Instead of pleats I folded in the edges and topstitched along a printed line thus making the side borders narrower than the bottom border.  I did not cut off any fabric.

The dark border on the side is doubled back over itself.

Then I stapled the fabric along the back of the 8-foot 1 by 2, ran it over the top and let it fall on the front side.

I used push pins to temporarily hold the fabric on the board so it could be easily adjusted.

The top of the curtain (or shade) is 8 inches from the ceiling.  At first I mistakenly hung it only 7-inches from the ceiling but it didn’t totally cover the top row of window panes which looked too busy.

I staples about every 4 to 6 inches.

The curtain is 30.5 inches long.

Planning curtains for the returns on the bump-out next.

I still have half of a tablecloth to make smaller curtains for the 2 side windows and  the window on the long counter near the sink.

Do you have tips on correcting wrong measurements?