Homemade

This year, my boyfriend and I live in a flat in an old Gothic building. With period features including archways, large beautifully designed windows and high ceilings, it was hard not to fall in love with the place. After living here for a few weeks we found that because our bedroom window was quite big and the curtains provided were rather thin, quite a lot of light was let into our room sometimes making it difficult to sleep. The solution to this was to get new curtains.

New, thick curtains made to the size of our window, however, was looking to be quite expensive, which is something us students don't like. So an idea was born, why not make our own curtains? We ventured into Samuel Taylor's, a fabric shop in Leeds city centre, to see what fabrics we could use. We got a few metres of thick red cotton, to match some drapes over the bed; curtain blackout and some white cotton to line them. This is total came to £44, which was half the price of some of the curtains we'd seen (to be honest we bought too much fabric but it might come in handy in future!).

Over the next few evenings we began planning the final look of the curtains including how long they'd need to be and how we'd hang them on the rail. We cut out all the layers for each curtain, with seam and hem allowances and I got to work on my sewing machine. First i stitched the blackout to the lining to hold it in place, then I stitched the main red cotton to this, concealing all raw edges. A top edge was then added to the curtains, which is where some tabs are concealed so that the pole can be slotted through them and be hidden behind the curtain. This also meant that no light could come through above, below or around the curtains. It was a long process, mainly because I'm a perfectionist and wanted a professional finish, but it was really worth it! The curtains add a personal touch to our flat, making it feel even more homely than before.

Images from my camera