i'll never do this again

i FINALLY finished a project i've been putting off for a long, long time. i won't even say how long it took me to do this, let alone the fact they've been up a year and a half, packaging wrinkles and all. 

we bought some drapery panels for the living room windows, but they weren't long enough, so i thought, surely it won't be any trouble to get an extra panel, cut it up and and add length to each one. well, there are 6. i'm not good at sewing. i'm too ambitious for my own good. i would rather be doing something else. 

i debated over how to cover the seam and where to add the length. initially i planned to buy some trim, but i couldn't find the right width and color at a price we could afford. so instead of letting that hold up the project – did i mention it had already been a year and a half! – i got started and went with a french seam near the top, because i wanted the wrong side to be finished, since the fabric is sheer.

i read the instructions over here, and started on the first panel. it wasn't until i had spent an hour and a half sewing and cutting that i noticed my mistake. instead of putting WRONG SIDES TOGETHER (she clearly noted this using caps), i did the opposite. this is always what happens when i sit down to sew. but the beauty about this is that i no longer had to worry about covering the seam with tape or trim, because the french seam was facing the outside...and didn't look like an accident!

here's a before shot. forgive the dim picture. it was overcast that day.

as you can see, the original panels had a rod pocket treatment at the top, which i thought i would keep, but once i  re-hung them, i didn't like how scrunched they looked. complicating matters further and prolonging this project to the point of being intolerable, i decided to add drapery rings. what i didn't know is that little rings of metal run $3 apiece. i needed 50. so i went through my stash of chain and found some circular brass links, which i cut apart and sewed on.

now they touch the floor, are wrinkle-free, and are coming with us if and when we leave this house, because i'm never doing this again.