Do you ever have a moment where you see something (a room in your home, your wardrobe, your hair, whatever) and you think, “I can’t live with that another second”? I’ve been having a lot of those moments lately, however this post will be on one of the things I actually changed.

Last week I decided that I couldn’t look at the hideous curtains in my office another day. I’ll show you a photo of the old ones in a second and you will laugh your head off and wonder why those ever made it up on my window in the first place.

The home office that I share with my husband is crammed full of stuff. Photo gear, computers, open shelving (why oh why?), so I knew I wanted a simple curtain that wouldn’t add to the visual noise of the room. Yes, you could argue that a bold color/pattern might draw the eye to the curtain and away from the hoarder’s den, but I decided to stay with a neutral color.

In my neighborhood, we have a weird fabric store. It is stocked with hundreds of bolts of hideous fabric, with a few bolts of cotton and linen hidden here and there. It is insanely cheap, and is where I got the linen to make the napkins this winter. I decided that I would go into Manhattan and visit some of the gorgeous fabric stores like B&J fabrics and Mood.

I knew I needed 5 yards of fabric and wanted to line them. We put guests in our office, and the streetlights can be pretty bright if you don’t have decent curtains. I found a tutorial on making lined curtains, so off I went to shop. I browsed and browsed the amazing fabrics at these shops. Liberty of London, gorgeous Japanese cottons, stunning linens. But I came to realize that 5 yards of fabric that was $35/yard was not in the price range I wanted. So I headed over to my little ghetto fabric shop in Brooklyn.

I found a pretty neutral linen that the guy gave to me for $4/yard and a white cotton that he gave me for $3/yard.

I sewed up the curtains and figured out how to make a blind hem. Tutorial here. This is the back where you can see the stitching. The little downward jog is where the needle picks up a tiny bit of fabric on the front side. You get a tiny stitch every so often, instead of a straight row of stitches that run all the way across the bottom.Here’s the front of the panel. You can see a horizontal crease, but no stitches. I think I could get rid of that crease if I pulled out a steamer and really got serious.

I think they  turned out really well. Not bad for $35, eh?

And now for the photo of the old curtains. I honestly don’t know what possessed me to make these in the first place. I think I was looking for a fabric thick enough that it would block the light, but red velvet?? Seriously?