Curtains to the rescue

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I have mentioned a few times that I have not one, but two sister in laws who are pregnant, and are due about a month apart from one another!  Now that we know we are expecting two new nephews, it is time to get sewing some baby goodness!

My brother is a volunteer fire fighter, so when him and his wife found out they were having a boy, it came as no surprise that they wanted to decorate the nursery with a fire truck theme!  My sister in law had asked if I could make her blackout curtains like Nora's, and while I had a quick internal shudder, as those babies were a PITA, I of course said yes and figured it would go a little smoother the second time around!  But then I remember that they had not one, but TWO sets of windows in the nursery.  Yikes.  Luckily after talking it over with SIL, she told me she only wanted half length curtains, to which my crafty insides did a celebratory happy jig!



I typically am not a huge fan of novelty fabric, so when I set out on the mission to find firefighter themed fabric I was bracing for the worst.  I stumbled upon this Robert Kaufman Ruff n' Tuff fabric and thought it was perfect!  SIL agreed and yards and yards and yards were purchased (which was a good thing, because I'm having a hard time finding some to link!)



I wanted to try doing back tabs on these panels so I followed along with this tutorial  and just altered my finished length to 60" instead of the full length in the tutorial.  Likely due to the combination of making curtains once before and the shorter length, but these came together so incredibly smoothly, and fairly quickly!  I'd put these at a 5 nap sew.  So basically over the course of 3 days with an hour or two here and there, not bad for 4 curtain panels!



The back tabs turned out great, and a bonus that I didn't need to purchase anything extra like grommets to hang the panels.



Mario the cat wanted to checkout what was going on in the nursery, he give them two thumbs up.  He said he was equally impressed that all four curtain panels were the same exact length.  Me too my four legged friend, me too.  That's always my worst fear, is that one panel will end up longer or shorter than the rest, but have no fear, these were spot on!



As I knew they would, these do a great job and keeping the light out.  Don't let this picture fool you, there was a ton of light coming in from the door way.  Like I used for Nora's curtain's I used this Ron-Loc black out fabric on the backside of the curtains, and it really is a winner.  I picked up some at Joann's and used a 40% off coupon.  I can't wait to see their nursery come together, I of course have a few more projects in mind, including a crib skirt, the best burp cloths in the entire world (will share the details soon) and a few Divided Baskets, and of course a quilt or two for each new addition, so the blog will be in baby overload mode for the next few weeks!