DIY Project Finished {well, close enough}

We have been talking about our need for curtains since moving into our condo... Z really wanted curtains because of the intense afternoon sun that we get. I agreed that curtains would help eliminate the awful glare and all, but there were a few hurdles to the curtain solution. First, our living area has a whole wall of windows... floor to ceiling... that span almost the entire wall. That meant we were looking for curtains to cover 16 ft x 10 ft. Both impossible to find and incredibly expensive! Second, I kind of liked the look of no curtains. I love the view and the light and I really just didn't want to pay a fortune to cover that up! Well when I got back from staying with my parents, Z had thought up his own solution for the intense afternoon sun...

He had the air mattress blown up and propped in front of the windows, ha! I didn't really want curtains, but I really didn't want an air mattress propped against our windows. So I decided to come up with a solution {not involving an air mattress} to our curtain dilemma. My mom had told me about an idea to use painter's drop cloths for curtains. I googled it and found lots of examples of this very same idea. It seemed like the perfect solution... I could make them myself, make them the size that I needed, and it was very affordable! I knew that I would have to add fabric at the bottom to make the curtains long enough so I found examples of this as well. I headed out to pick up the supplies I needed for my diy drop cloth curtains with fabric... I bought 2 6x9 drop cloths at Home Depot for around $10 each! I also bought clip on curtain rings at Home Depot. I bought fabric that was 50% off at JoAnns to add to the bottom of my curtains. And I already had steam-a-seam to use for the edges...

Clip on curtain rings

Drop cloth ready to be made into curtains

The fabric I found half off at JoAnns! I'm still not sure that the color was right, but oh well!

First I washed and dried my drop cloths. Thankfully they came with already finished edges. I cut my fabric in half to give me two pieces, 6 ft wide and about 2 ft long. I went ahead and used the steam-a-seam to finish the top and bottom edges of my fabric. {I just followed the directions on the package, super simple} Then I pinned the fabric pieces to the bottom of each drop cloth {I measured and all so that they would be the same ;)} I really wanted to use my awesome sewing machine... but I never have before and I didn't think this was a good practice project! So hand stitching it was... this part about drove me mad!! I used an extra sturdy thread and a needle and attached the fabric to the drop cloth by hand...

Don't look at the stitching too closely... it is not perfect by any means! But it worked. Last I used steam a seam to finish the sides of my fabric. I didn't really get any pictures of the process, but there are plenty of step by step instructions that you can google for this diy project. Here are the pictures of the {almost} finished product...
First the before...

And now...

I'm not 100% sure that I love how yellow the fabric looks :/

We are still working on the curtain rod... It was going to cost another small fortune to buy a curtain rod that was 16+ feet long. So I found another diy solution to use electrical conduit from Home Depot for about $1.50 per 10 feet! We had to purchase a 10 foot piece and a 7 foot piece and a connector to be able to span the entire window with a little extra on each side. Z attached hooks to both sides of the windows to hold the rod. But once we put the curtains up, we realized that the rod was flexing big time. So now we have to figure out a middle support for the rod :/ Oh well. I am really excited to see the completely finished project once we have the rod fully supported!!