Drapes.

As the daylight stays later this time of year, my lovely daughters struggle to go to bed at a reasonable hour and have been requesting some curtains for their room. They have wooden blinds, but they’re not particularly stylish and let a lot of light in through the cracks. In order to achieve the light-blocking that is necessary, I have set out to sew them lined drapes. True confession: I hate sewing window treatments. They are big and awkward and just squares when finished. Good thing that I have Michelle!

She has made many sets of drapes in her life, and is my drape-sewing hero, as well as my dear friend and partner here at the store. We headed out in search of fabric and trims and ended up doing a whole fabric store tour through Portland. Fabric Depot, Bolt, and The Whole 9 Yards were all a part of this project. Without any know-how, I would have been well served to start at the Whole 9 Yards (because those ladies know a thing or two about drapes), but you see, I had Michelle, so we grabbed fabric at the Depot and found lovely purple ball fringe at Bolt.

The Whole 9 Yards is where I ended up with hardware questions, and boy are they helpful! They even have classes on planning just this sort of thing. The class is a lecture/demo, so once you get your plan, swing by here for some open sewing and make use of the rotary cutting equipment and the large tables. I also loved using the walking foot (yay!) and seam ripper (boo!). I should finish these up this week and plan to post pictures next week of them hanging up all pretty in the girls room.

True confession: It was way better than I thought it would be and I am looking forward to making more for the guest room. That window has a really nice peach honeycomb blind that barely works. It is going to end up with something show-stopping from The Whole 9 Yards, like the huge peacock feather print I just can’t get off my mind.