As I lay my head down to sleep, the bright light hitting me directly in the eyes and lighting up my room like it’s 11am, was just the push I needed. The three huge lights outside my bedroom, were recently put up after an incident at the restaurant behind our house. I am usually against having outside lights on, but after reading about the incident so close to my house, I really didn’t mind them going up. But something had to be done about my lit up bedroom. I decided to take it into my own hands and make some curtains for the bedroom windows. I figured, I have lots of fabric I bought to make curtains years ago, and had been waiting for the push to get it done. I can do this.
Well, let me tell you, this is one I will NEVER do again. (Although, never say never because circumstances will always come around to make you eat your words.) Let’s just say these curtains were my nightmare. I’m the kind of sew lady that does not use a pattern. They bog me down and stifle my creativity. I’m happy with a little quirkiness to my end products so I refuse to be held in by cutting patterns and pinning them. So I let my scissors fly, do some rough measurements, pin the fabric and off to the sewing machine I go. This tactic seems to work fine for my other projects, but not curtains. Curtains are the evil of straightness, requiring straight lines, folds, the right fabric, and precise measurements. I had met my match.
I spent the entire day on Saturday fighting with the fabric, sewing machine and an insane amount of pins (some that will forever be inside these curtains). Why did I choose a silky fabric for one side and a cotton stretch for the other?? My original idea didn’t come to fruition in the first completed curtain, so I made a rash decision that all four curtains would be unique. I thought it may be cute if all the curtains were made of the same fabric, yet all be a bit different. By the last curtain, and about 8 hours later, I was about to take my comforter and nail it across the windows to block out the light. My frustration was building and my last curtain became a box. I can easily stuff it with pillow stuffer and make it a huge pillow someday.
My dog, Beaker, was not helping keeping the fabric straight either:
Here lies the problem of long straight lines with the wrong fabric. Bunching, moving, stretching, and all kinds of movement lead to many problems. 
Don’t judge the final products. Just be happy I made it through a challenging day and will live to see a dark bedroom in my near future. I still have to buy one more rod and hooks to hang the last two curtains. I hope they go up without any problems.
So cheers to making things all on your own, being a renaissance woman, and taking care of the environment. But today I learned a valuable lesson, some things are worth purchasing! I am sure there are some environmentally friendly curtains out there, that had my name written all over them.
Made it!