Hello World! In my years of teaching voice and singing opera, I have had the good fortune to do a bit of traveling. And, of course, when I travel, I shop as well. I will shop for just about anything, except I’m not a big fan of going to the grocery store. Go figure. As my readers know, probably my favorite thing to shop for is home furnishings. And, one of my favorite spots in the world to shop is in London. I have enjoyed many an afternoon perusing the shops and getting lost (which can really be quite fun) with one of my singing friends.
My Shopping Fix
It has been a while since I last bought curtains, but when my friend asked me to go shopping for some I agreed straight away. I still love to shop even if I do keep stopping every hour to sample the local cafes. You do have to have shopping breaks, right? Walking past a new cafe without stopping to sample their drinks and cakes is trickier than it used to be. Despite my coffee breaks, we did have a productive day and got around to all of the shops we had planned to visit.
My friend is good with the needle and loves to make things herself, so we were really shopping for curtain fabrics rather than readymade curtains. A good job too because the price of readymade curtains is ridiculous, and there is not a great choice when it comes to styles. So after looking at a few readymade ones we gave up on that idea and focused on fabric shopping instead.
Tons of Fabric
I was stunned to find out that to make a pair of curtains you have to buy up to two and a half times as much fabric as the width of the space you are covering. Exactly how much you need depends on the gather you choose and how far beyond the frame of your window you want the curtains to start. My friend used this curtain calculator to work out how much fabric she needed.
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of stores on the British High Street that sell fabric anymore, which means that the choice was limited. This coupled with the fact that her window was not a typical width or height meant that, in the end, we ended up coming home empty handed.
The Online Option
My friend did find what she needed eventually, but online. She ordered some beautiful mohair velvet. It is lovely rich fabric, which has the added benefit of being naturally fire retardant. Apparently, this material is used for the curtains of the Savoy Hotel restaurant … hmm now there’s an idea for a future post.
Her house has high ceilings, so she needed a medium weight fabric. In addition, the living room she made the curtains for is on the street side and there is a street light only a few meters from the window. This meant that the curtains had to be reasonably thick to keep the light out. Velvet works well for this, but she added a backing just to be sure.
Adding the backing was a lot of extra work, but I think it was worth it. I saw the curtains up without the backing and they definitely hung better once the backing had been added. In addition, the backing will protect the material from the damaging effects of sunlight.
The finished curtains were beautiful and certainly much nicer than the readymade ones we saw. When I need new curtains, I know who I will be asking to make them for me.
Thanks for popping in for a visit! Make it Pretty will go live tonight at 8:00PM CDT. I hope to see you there! Have a lovely afternoon and remember to be kind to one another!
Toodles,
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