It all started with curtains

Ok. So I started the playroom once I had the inspiration fabric, I was on a roll and I wanted to get that room finished. Of course being who I am, I spend a little way too much time on pinterest and I came across this:

and this...

 and this one...

and finally this one:

A Thoughtful Place Blog

I was in love, no seriously these curtains are the bees knee. I love them, but as some bloggers were doing was buying these shower curtains from West Elm and adding an additional band of fabric. No, I'm too cheap (seriously I am) spending $42 one one shower curtain (although now they are on sale for $32) So I went to the fabric store and bought myself 10 meters of fabric (5m of each color) and started to make curtains....

for the DINING ROOM! It was a project that I wasn't anticipating to do. When we moved into this house 4 years ago, I knew that I wanted to update the color on the walls. I mean, it wasn't that these colors were horrible. I could live with the colors for a while, it wasn't like they were so unbearable like our first house. Man, I wish I had pictures of some of the rooms, they were just un.be.lieve.a.ble! Here's an example of what we HAD to change

That was our kitchen, mushroom wallpaper and all. It was so gross!

Yes, folks that is a forest green ceiling!

and this was the best worst room ever! Black, red and wallpaper.

So when we bought this current place, one of our criteria was a move in ready place. If we wanted to do work we could in the future. So fast forward, here we are 4 years later and I was sick of this: 

So I decided to change it. I started with the curtains, and of course it had a trickle down effect. If I was making new curtains I might as well paint and finish the entire room.  Here's the curtains, I think I did an okay job with them, being the beginner sewer that I am. The lines stayed pretty straight (I hope)and here's how I did it.

I started by buying my fabric (of course) Then I had to cut all of my strips (20 in total, 10 white & 10 grey) 

I used a table cloth runner as my guide, it was the perfect width for each stripe. I then iron all of my pieces. I really wanted to skip this step, but you can't. 

Then I head to the sewing machine and sewed two pieces together. Once I finished them all (10 in total) I headed back to the ironing board and iron each panel. 

Then I repeated these steps again until I had a total of 10 stripes on each panel. After that, I lined the panels with a cheap ($5.97) curtain from Wal-Mart and sewed that on and voila, I have curtains. I am. in.love with them. Here's a breakdown of the cost:

5 meters of grey fabric- $13

5 meters of white fabric- $7

2 cheap curtains for lining-$12

thread-$8 (I needed 3 spools)

Total= $40

So I guess in the end I could have bought the West Elm shower curtain and it would have saved me a lot of time and energy but at least this way I have custom curtains (I have to look at the bright side) and also my curtains are also 48" wide where the west elm ones would have only been 36" wide. So here they are hanging in my dining room, I still love them.

Now I have to finish the playroom. Off I go....