A finish which won't win prizes

I have a finish. 

Yes! Yay. Not a quilt but still a finish.

 The curtains for the spare room are done and hung and ready for the visitors who arrive tomorrow. They are not the best curtains I have ever made. They are in fact rather dodgey. In January I oversaw the making of curtains for our church manse (the name of the house where the minister lives in the Uniting Church of Australia. Manse is used in a number of different denominations... Baptist's call their minister's house a manse too.In fact most denominations that I know do... except for Anglicans who have vicarage and or parsonage, and Catholics.... ) 

Anyway in January we made curtains for our manse for the lounge and master bedroom and repaired and switched around some other curtains. They all went fine. I got lots of credit there (not all of it due mind you but still.....) So I wasn't at all worried about these curtains. One set of sill length curtains, self patterned so no stripes or patterns to match. Easy

Well I think that they cut them wrong in the shop for a start. I had measured the drop, added the hem and the turning for the top and then ordered 3 drops. When I started to make the curtains I realised that one drop was a bit shorter than the others but I wasn't worried.But I DIDN'T CHECK I was confident I had over estimated, added more than I needed for the hem and the header cause I always do.  I needed to cut one of the drops in half and sew one half to each of the other drops. when I sewed it to one, it was okay, bit out but not too bad but when I sewed the second half it was out by about 15 cms. I unpicked it and sewed it again, trying to stretch the short side out a bit but no good. I still wasn't worried cause I thought I had allowed heaps extra for the hem.

My machine didn't seem to like sewing the plastic backed curtains. It wouldn't feed through properly and it was seeming to gather it Now not sure what was happening with my machine but it sure didn't like sewing that plastic backed curtain It did seem to gather it a bit. It got worse as I tried to fix it. (Think now that this was due to me trying to stretch it out when with the plastic backed curtaining there is no stretch. so just like with quilting if you over stretch the backing when clamping it to the table or taping it to the floor, when you release the clamps the back retracts to where it was and causes puckering cause the top isn't as stretched out. So in trying to fix the problem I made it worse)

I hung the curtains without turning the hem for a couple of days to let them drop. Thursday morning I took them down in order to try to get them sewn in time for my visitors who arrive Friday night. I measured where I want the hem to turn and took the curtains down... and that is where I ran into problems. I found that the short seam, the one where one side was 15cm shorter than the other, ended at the window sill with no fabric left for the turn up for the hem.  What a mess. I couldn't trim to curtains off to be even as they would be 15cms too short.

What I should have done was added some fabric to the bottom in order to make a false hem but I was in a hurry and not really thinking straight. For those following my blog or on twitter or facebook will know that I am not really well at the moment. I seem to be suffering a resurgence of the Barmah Forrest Virus I had last year. (go here for my whinge about it earlier this week)

SO I did a really bodgey job SOO... I turned a narrow fold over on the short bit all the way to the edge of the curtain. (following the bottom of the fabric to just give it the first turn Then turned the hem up to where it needed to be on the edge of the curtain  and got the bottom even so it was straight across. I then sewed across in a straight line  to the other side of the curtain even though that meant that after a point I wasn't actually catching the bottom of the curtain.but the hem looks like it is sewn straight.

 Once my visitors are gone and I feel better I might take them down and fix them up. But for now they are up and they look okay. The bed head is higher than the window ledge so you can't see the bottom of the curtains anyway. Guess its really a case of Fake it Till You Make It... or in this case Fake it WHEN you make it

You can see what I mean here with people not really being able to see the hems  

The photo would have been better if I had pulled the bed forward but it is so heavy I could hardly move it

Ta Dah

I am not going to photograph my disgusting hemming. You get photos of the curtains hanging in the spare room and that is it. If you want to see my dirty little secret you have to come visit and ask to see them. That way I will know who reads my blog. (My sister in law reads my blog. But I am pretty safe. She has only visited me once in this house and we have lived here 25 years. She does like me... well she says she does. Well she reads my blog anyway... sometimes)

I could just keep quiet about all this... not mention it to anyone. Who would notice. Who is going to look at the hems of the curtains in my spare room. Least said soonest mended. But that is not my way... oh no... why spoil a good story... lets just put it out there. Mention it on my blog that is read by hundreds the world over. OK I exaggerate. This blog is read by about 15 people on a regular basis. None of you live locally. Some live across the world. Some of you I know I have completely confused by using words like Dodgey and Bodgey (both mean basically the same... not a good quality - way less than perfect, pretty hit and miss, B-grade. Dodgey or dodgie is usually an adjective... He's a bit dodgey (untrustworthy) or He did a dodgey job (unreliable) Bodgiey is more likely to be a verb... bodgied it up... fixed something but not properly, using poor materials or made it look ok on the surface but not really fixed. Well that is how I use them and how my family does. Other people might dispute these interpretations. 

Linking up with Thank Goodness its Finished Friday and Can I get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict