Handmade (well, kind of) Curtains and Place Mats

Good morning!

Today I wanted to post about some pretty fabric I bought at JoAnn's recently and how I made them into curtains for our dining room. I also used the same fabric to make place mats for the dining table and the color and design of the fabric works well in the room.

To start, I bought this fabric at JoAnn's with a 50% off coupon from their store, so it cost half the price of the original price tag. It's always best to use coupons or wait for a sale because you can get a great product for half, or more, of the original price. You just have to be patient if you want to wait for an item to go on sale or wait for coupons to come in. I usually check the Internet for catalog sales/coupons before I go out and shop for something. I am not that patient usually, but I am glad I was this time.  :)

Anyways, here is the fabric I bought at JoAnn's. Isn't it pretty?

 

I knew a green colored fabric was something I wanted for the room so when I spied this at the fabric store, it was love at first sight.

I also bought two of these at JoAnn's so there was no sewing needed here, just an iron. :)

 

 

It is called Steam-A-Seam and it works great!!

What I did was place a few strips of the Steam-A-Seam onto the fabrics edges and just ironed away. You have to iron each area with the strips for 10-15 seconds and voila! You have beautiful curtains ready to hang on the rod. Just make sure to measure the length of your curtains so you don't end up with something too short or too long depending on how your rod is being hung from the wall. I wanted our curtains to be touching the floor because if it was too short, it just wouldn't look right- at least to me that is. :)

 

You might be wondering why there is no dining table in the dining room above. Well, the pictures above show what the dining room looked like when we moved the dining table out of the dining room and behind the couch near the entry way. We thought the dining table looked great placed by the entry way near a big window we have in the house, but it is something we can always go back and change if we want to put the dining table back in that spot again. For now, the dining table is back in the dining room and it looks pretty good there too- so it will stay for a while. :)

Don't you like our dog, Hilo's, towel on the floor? Haha! It is a good place for Hilo to wipe his paws when he comes in from outside and it helps keep the carpets clean.

I also wanted to make matching place mats out of the same fabric that we have for the dining room curtains. It only took about 2-3 yards of fabric for the place mats and I can take them off and clean them if need be. (The fabric is really easy to clean which is always a plus!!) Here is a picture of the place mats on our table.

 

 

It looks fabulous with the table runner we already had.

 

 

I used the Steam-A-Seam again to make the place mats and just ironed away again. To do this, I took place mats that we already had, placed the fabric on the front of the mats and ironed the Steam-A-Seam strips to the back of the place mats. And there you have it - a new look to your place mats and dining room and it matches perfectly with the curtains, of course.

And here is a final picture of the dining room with the curtains and the place mats in view.

Sorry for the dark photo above - the camera isn't a professional one, but it does the job. :)

 

 

In another post sometime, I will take pictures of each room and the colors I used on the walls. I don't enjoy painting walls all that much, but I love what a new color of paint can do to a room. That, to me, is worth it in the long run.  :)

Thanks for stopping by!