The Kitchen Curtains are D-O-N-E!

Yay!  I really like how they turned out, but, man, this project was so much more frustrating than it ought to have been.  But before I get ahead of myself, how about a before pic?

Again, I liked the original curtains well enough to keep them hanging around (get it?  ha ha ha) for a couple of years.  But I was getting a little bored with them.  So my plan was to dye them.  If you'd like to see that post, you can find it here.

I dyed them grey, and I'm pretty happy with those results.  The next step was to add some sort of design.  I wanted to do an impressionist flower thing, and this is what I came up with:

I cut all the shapes freehand and pinned them on the curtains.  I sort of eyeballed the distances between each flower and the edges of the curtains.  I didn't want anything to be too exact.

The next step was to sew them on.  At first I was going to hand sew it, but decided that was incredibly impractical since I have a sewing machine and it would take a fraction of the time to use the machine.

But my self-taught sewing skills really caught up with me during this project.  I wanted to use a zigzag stitch for the flower stems, and I'm really just learning as I go here.  I knew enough to reduce the tension...but I sort of figured that that was all there was to it.  I must be wrong, though.  It just kept jamming and tangling up on me.  I wanted to throw my machine across the room more than once.  But somehow, we -- my machine and I -- got threw it.

For the actual flower buds, I used a straight stitch and that was much easier.  Aahh, good old basic sewing.  I just turned the curtains in circles as I stitched each bud to achieve a crazy, not-too-calculated circle pattern.

I'm sorry I don't have any pics of the sewing.  I was too busy silently cursing my machine to think about the camera.

But I do have a lot of after pics!  So, without further ado:

Here's a close-up of the flower pattern.  My almost-three-year-old decided that they were lollipops when she saw them.  I think I'm okay with that. :)

  
This is a full picture of the whole dining nook.  My Dave made this table for me as a Christmas present one year, and I love it.  I scored the wooden chair for $20 at a boutique here at the beach because one of the slats on the back is broken.  Dave got the other chair from his office for free about 10 years ago when they were updating all their furniture.  It had awful, ratty grey upholstery, so I cleaned up the rust and reupholstered it awhile back.  I made the picture board a few years ago and I update it with family photos every few months.

This is a shot of the other side of the nook.  I love this floating shelf from Target and I'd like to add another one.

This picture is probably the most true-to-life as far as the color of the curtains.  

And, just for fun, this is the corner of my kitchen.  On the shelf I've got a four picture series of our family from last summer at a friend's wedding.  It's not framed right now...one of these days I'll get around to framing and hanging it.  I also have this awesome mug that I found at a yard sale -- it's a piece of pottery that was thrown on a wheel, but it looks as if it got squished.  I call it my accident mug.  I've also got some milk glass (faux, maybe) that I found at another yard sale; yellow mugs from Goodwill; and a small pestle that I bought in the Dominican Republic years ago.  

I made the stuffed birds and sewed and hot glued them to a branch that I found in my yard.  I love them.  I know that bids are a little overdone, but I can't bring myself to take them down.  Dave thinks the two in the middle look like they're staring intently into a pot of soup.  I like that :)  

Well, that's it!  If you're reading this and you have mad sewing skills and know exactly what went wrong with my project, I'd love your advice.  I have a slip cover that I'm in the middle of and I can't bring myself to finish it just yet.  I need a little break from sewing before I dive right into the sewing machine again (with a project that promises to be just a little more difficult than this one). 

Thanks for reading!

Sarah