Suzi’s decorating a new one-bedroom home and has been sharing her ideas & inspirations (& many fails… ahem) throughout the process. Read her blog posts on this: Suzi’s House Project.
This past weekend I set to work making the muslin lining that will sit behind our linen curtains. This will help to block light and also to block prying eyes from outside hehe, since the linen ones don’t really do either job adequately. I noticed that the linen curtains are 108″ from top to bottom, with wide hems at the top and bottom of about 3 to 4″. Figuring I would do the same for the muslin lining too, I measured out a piece of cloth 118″ long. This would give me 5 extra inches on each end to form a similar wide hem.
It was a lucky thing I had this heavy-duty handyman’s tape measure because it was actually 25 feet long. This way I could measure the whole 9′ panel in one go, instead of using a shorter sewer’s tape measure and groveling along the floor to measure the whole length! After chopping it at 118″ I threw it in the washer, then for a spin in the dryer to pre-shrink.
Of course all of the panels came out of the dryer as super wrinkly sheets, which I then had to painstakingly iron again. When I re-measured them, I was shocked to find that they were now 112″ long! Apparently they shrank 6″ … unless I was just going crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of fabric shrinking by that much. But there was the evidence right in front of me. Thankfully I had cut it way longer than I actually needed and I still had 2″ on each end to use for the hems, for a final length of 108″ to match the outer lining. Phew! That was a close one. I would have been one pissed seamstress if all my cut pieces were unusable.
Next, I folded and ironed each long edge over by about 1/2″, using my sewing gauge to measure all the way down.
Then folded each edge over again by another 5/8″. These are totally arbitrary amounts. I could have made the seams wider or thinner.
As you can imagine, trying to manage a 9ft piece of cloth was kind of cumbersome. It would bunch up on the left side as I sewed the panel from top to bottom. My computer, which I always keep at my side to chat and Skype with Em, was a bit overwhelmed, pictured below 🙂
And voila, a huge-ass piece of rectangular muslin with the raw edges cleaned up and sewn in!
Then I clipped the curtain clip rings on.
And hung it up!
Here you can see the bottom part gathered next to the outer linen. The colors matched nicely as it turns out!
And you can no longer see through the lefthand panel with the double lining! Yaay for privacy.
Lovely curtains, Susan. I have to admit, when I first read your headline, I thought it said something about The “Muslim” Lining (of course,that would have made no sense given the curtain context). And here I was thinking Mousybabe was getting all political and shitz.
Oh yeah that’s what I meant – the lining is actually made of upcycled, repurposed turban cloth 😉 teehee