Nursery Progress: Part 1

A few weeks ago, Bill and I painted Baby Chalupa's nursery in Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter. At that point, Bill also painted the ceiling and the trim white. This weekend we checked a few more projects off the list. 

When we moved into the house a few years ago, we noticed that the previous owners were lazy painters. They rolled right over all of the electrical outlets, so even though we painted the nursery pale gray, all of the outlets were still baby blue. Luckily, we had the day off today so Bill took the opportunity to change out all of the outlets and covers so that everything is white now. It really freshened up the room.

The biggest update at this point are the curtain panels that I made today. There are two windows in the small room, so I knew this was my opportunity to introduce a lot of color, pattern, and personality into the room. 

I headed to Joann's with my teacher ID in hand to take advantage of Teacher Appreciation Weekend and the extra 25% off. At first I was discouraged because none of the home decor fabrics were striking my fancy, looks wise or price wise. Since I needed about 10 yards of fabric, I needed to find something affordable. 

Finally, I happened upon the more modern fabrics in the back of the store. The fabrics were still the 54 inch wide, home-quality fabrics. The bonus was the sale price: $11.99 per yard! With my additional teacher discount, I knew that this was my best shot to find something that wasn't too pricey. 

Luckily, I found a great pink printed fabric that I loved. Simon was a big fan as well and he guarded it like a protective big brother. As I mentioned, I needed about 10 yards of fabric to make the four panels. Unfortunately, they only had eight and a half yards of the printed fabric. Thinking on my feet, I bought a few yards of inexpensive navy blue fabric to add a band to the printed fabric so I could achieve the length I needed.

I'll give a real tutorial/explanation of how I made the panels after I complete the other two panels. At this point, I'm so thrilled to have completed and hung two panels that I had to share the results!

Initially, I planned to add the navy blue band to either the top or the bottom of the panel. After playing around with the fabric a bit, I decided I was up for a challenge and added the stripe about 8 inches from the top of the the curtain panel. This definitely tested my novice sewing skills and even my math skills to measure everything out and make sure that the patterns lined up everywhere and the stripes matched up as well.

I used drapery clips to hang the panels so I didn't have to worry about sewing in a rod pocket or adding loops to the panels. An added bonus to using the clips is that they create a fancy folded effect to the panels as they hang.

It was night time by the time I finished and hung the two panels, so forgive the dark photos. I wanted to try and get a better picture of the gray walls, but I think I failed. Its usually dark by the time I get home from school, so hopefully next weekend I'll be able to get a decent shot of the gray walls!

So that's where we stand at this point with the nursery. I think we've found a crib that we like, but we're just checking out all of the options before ordering it. We still have plenty of time!

Have you ever made your own curtains? This was one of my most ambitious projects to date and now I certainly understand why curtain panels cost so much in the store!

Thanks for reading,
Kathleen