I make curtains for Kailani

OK, so I made curtains with my mom’s help.  Or maybe she made curtains with my help.  She did a lot of the work and all the hand stitching.  On top of that she supplied the expertise that helped my work be much more efficient.  I did a lot of reading and studying before moving onto a boat.  I learned a lot, but I didn't think to learn how to sew  proficiently so I had some catching up to do.

If you read the post Marina-3, Will-0, you’ll know that I sacrificed my phone to the marina and with it a lot of photos.  I lost some really good photos of the original ugly curtains.  However, I had one left on my new phone.  These curtains were almost indescribably ugly, but since I found a photo I won't have to describe them.  I’m sure they would have looked ok in a room filled with antiques lived in by a woman who was slightly over 100, but the pattern had no place on a sailboat.  Any sailboat.  Ever.  In the forward cabin the curtains made a little more sense.  They were quilted curtains with little sailboats on them.  Nice, but a little too cutesy for us.  We picked a nice nautical stripe that looked good with the wood and left us lots of options for new saloon upholstery.  Below are the photos of the two types of curtains originally on the boat. 

No words.

 

Forward cabin curtains - the good looking ones.

 

One of the really cool things that my mom showed me was how to make sure the fabric was straight.  The sides are always straight because they are manufactured that way, but the edge going across is cut in the store and is rarely straight or at a right angle to the sides.  Especially with fabric that has strips it is really important to have the strips going straight up and down or across.  So, to make sure you have straight edges you pull a thread.  All the threads run straight across the fabric, so you find a thread on one side of the fabric and start pulling.  The fabric begins to gather and you slide it along the thread.  If you keep pulling and sliding, eventually you will create a line all the way across the fabric that will be at a 90 degree angle to the sides.  You just cut along the line and you have a piece of material that has square edges.

Another tip was to make sure there were no loose threads inside the curtains.  We made lined curtains.  They have two layers and are sort of like a sealed envelope.  If there is anything inside, there is no easy way to get it out.  You may not notice a thread when the curtains are just laying on a table, but once hanging over a window the light will shine through and illuminate any stray threads.  So, you have to hold them up to a light and remove any strays before you sew them shut.

I did most of the easy sewing and my mom did the detailed sewing. Sewing the material together was mostly my job, but when it came to stitching across the top where people could actually see the thread - that was all mom.

Well, a couple of long weekends and the curtains were all finished.  They are now hung in the boat and greatly improve the view from inside.  Next improvement for the inside will be new upholstery, but there is lots to do outside before we get to that.

The new curtains installed.  No threads showing through.

Much better than before.