It's a pinch

I started this project at Christmas.  I'm so behind... I can't believe I'm only finishing it now!  But while I was at home over Christmas my Mom taught me how to make pinch pleated curtains.  I love a good window treatment... and I think pinch pleats are the bomb.  I found this fabric at fabric.com for a steal of a deal... like $6.00 a yard or something crazy like that and thought that it would make great curtains.  I can't find it on fabric.com anymore-- it must be sold out... but I found it here for $23.99 a yard.  I like my deal better :)

So I made my curtains over Christmas with my mother's guidance and brought them home in my suitcase.  And then I got lazy, and they sat in the office waiting to be ironed, hemmed, and hung!  All of a sudden-- over the past few months-- I started noticing this fabric pop up here and there...

source

source

source

source

Apparently there are other people out there who like the same things I do... kind of reassuring :)  Well after many many months of procrastination, I finally hung the curtains!  Here they are...

Even though we have a smallish basement window in our office, I decided to hang floor to ceiling drapes to make the room feel more like an upstairs room... it makes the window seem grander and more important.  I was a bit worried about how they would hang, since there is a bit of a ledge half way up the wall, but Doug stretched the brackets out as far as the could go and you can't even notice the built out half wall.

For those of you who don't know what pinch pleats are, here's a close up.  You basically sew heading tape into the top,calculate how many pleats you want and how far apart they need to be (Doug's mad math skills sure came in handy for this step!) sew up your pleats, and insert metal hooks into the back of each pleat.  When it comes time to put them up, you place the hooks into metal rings that are attached to the curtain rod.  As you can imagine, making these kind of drapes are time consuming.  There's a lot of handiwork involved in creating them... which is why they are so expensive to buy!  So it was definitely more affordable for me to make them myself.

I love the look of drapes that "kiss" the floor.  And yes, I do realize that my floor length drapes hang over my baseboard heater.  I only turn it on occasionally on colder days when I work in the room, so I figured I can pick this panel up off the floor when I decide to turn it on.  Don't worry people!!

I'm loving the way the office feels with the new curtains.  There's something so great about cheerful curtains... they really make a room feel fun and bright... even a basement room!!

I ordered 6 yards of the fabric and only ended up using 5 to make these curtains... what to do with the remaining fabric... can anyone say throw pillows?