But finally, I am getting my family room curtains taken care of. I deliberated for ages on the fabric. I thought I would be going with red, but in the end, in went with black and cream toile. O ordered it from Fabric.com using a great coupon. I love toile! Even though it's a pattern, it's also somewhat of a neutral and it's easy to bring other colors and patterns in around it.
Years ago, I heard Christopher Lowell advise his viewers to go neutral on the big items. Then it's easy and inexpensive to change the look of the room by changing paint, pillows and "chotskies". Since I like to change things around often, I decided this was good advice for me.
Right now the room colors are starting to remind me of the coloring in the room pictured below. Don't get me wrong... I love that room. I look at that picture often. It's fabulous.
But, I plan to mix in more color. I want to add some brighter touches, like in this photo from Country Living. Try to imagine a blending of the two pictures. It will be tricky to pull off, but I'm going to try.
I originally thought I was going to make drapes with a top hanging over like the ones in this article by Jennifer Thoden. But if I did it with toile, the fabric scenes on the top part would be upside down, unless I sewed them in two pieces. Plus it would require more fabric. I already needed 36 yards just for plain panels.
Down the road, I could always come back and add a top panel like these pretty ones from Southern Hospitality.
Or add some trim, like The Nester likes to do. She likes to use her glue gun, but I wouldn't be able to do that, because with all our pets, it's important to be able to wash everything.
Stay tuned to see how my drapes turn out!