Burlap Curtains

As I've said before Fiance and I had an anniversary party in August. I am not a fan of single use items so when Mom insisted that we had table coverings I said we absolutely could not use those nasty plastic ones from Party City, they are far too wasteful. If that's what you are into fine, but I like natural materials and I like reusing and repurposing. I wanted natural burlap, but Mom insisted on red as it matched our decor better. So red burlap it was. Fine with me, I will use the natural burlap that I wanted at our wedding instead.

I repurposed that red burlap into new curtains to cover our closet. Fiance got home from work, walked into the bedroom and said "Wow. That is very red." He is not wrong.

I do think they would look cuter if they were natural colored. On the upside, the fabric was cheap and it took no time at all to make them. I used the selvedge edges, but I did fold them over and sew them down, then I hemmed the bottom and finally I folded about 4 inches of the top down to make a channel for the curtain rod. I didn't bother to measure the length for the curtains I just held it up and roughly cut it at the bottom. I also did not bothering tugging everything on grain. They are pretty sloppy, all things considered, but it only took half an hour and they cover up our clothes so I say mission accomplished.

The same day I made the curtains I also cleaned my sewing machine. It was making a slightly funny sound, and I realized that I had been neglecting to do some important maintenance. I clean lint out every time I change bobbin thread, but I rarely remove the needle plate.

I took the needle plate off so I could clean the hook race and feed dogs. 

I meant to take a picture of the ball of lint I got out (it was about the size of my pinky nail), but I got distracted. When I finished cleaning everything I sewed the curtains and got little red threads all over everything and I had to take it all apart and clean it again. Oh well. Lesson learned: sew with burlap, then clean your machine. Order of operation sometimes matters.