Making My House A Home: Kitchen Curtains

So a long time ago (at least it seems that way) I started a series called "Making My House A Home".  I did one post and haven't done another since then.  Fortunately that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything to make my house a home, I've just been tardy in blogging about it.

Ever since I can remember I've always wanted a bright cheery kitchen full of red accents.  During high school, or maybe even college, I can't really remember, I was at Meijer with my mom and I saw these adorable cafe style curtains that I wanted for my kitchen.  They were white cotton with a red panel at the bottom.  There were also red buttons with green stitching to make little cherries and I thought they would be perfect.  Since I didn't have my own kitchen and they weren't on sale I decided to let them go.  

Several years later I was getting ready to outfit my very own kitchen (and house) and was perusing the clearance aisle at Meijer.  Guess what I found!!  Those curtains!  I could hardly believe it, I was so excited!  Looking back I think I was more excited about the fact that the curtains that I had loved so much were still available than actually getting the curtains.  I put them up and they looked cute, but there was too much white, I wanted more red:

I don't normally keep my curtains that high, I just rehung them quickly to take a picture of them a) for the blog and b) so I could sell them online!

  After a while I decided I did indeed need more red but I didn't want to pay $20 for a new set.  I stopped in at Joann's Fabric one day to pick up some fabric for another project and happened upon this fabric:

I fell in love right away, it was classy and intricate but wouldn't be too overwhelming on our small window.  Best of all, it was on sale.  I only needed a yard and on sale it cost me just $2.25!  Now that's a bargain!  So I set to work with my sewing machine while Liam was napping.  I won't go into all the gory details but I followed this helpful tutorial and despite a few seams that look a little like a drunk person trying to walk a straight line I think they turned out pretty well:

I thought briefly about making the curtains the same height as the window because the view out that window is anything but pretty.  However I'm a big fan of natural light so I decided to just make them a couple inches taller than normal to cover some more of the less than pleasant view.   Something I didn't expect is that I've been enjoying using my sewing machine more and more.  However my skills are definitely a work in progress.  Hopefully I'll be able to post about the curtains I'm sewing for our office and the inches I added to my new dress soon!