Thursday, November 10, 2011

navy striped curtains

Awesome, yes?





Originally I wanted to do a striped wall over Greg's bed, like this.  However, this being a rental we plan on leaving in the next year or so, I didn't want to paint navy blue stripes on the wall and have to paint them back to white a few months later.  I looked for a removable option, like these wall decals, but everything I found was at least $100+ worth of materials, and seemed like a lot of work (remember the Jets decal?) for something I would have to remove in a few months.

Instead, I decided to try striped curtains.  West Elm now carries a navy striped duvet, so I could have made curtains like the ones in my bedroom.  But it was still more than I wanted to spend.

I had white Merete curtains from Ikea that I was using in the boys' room.  I bought a quart of Behr's Midnight Dream, and painted the curtains using this tutorial.  I used regular paint, not fabric paint, and didn't add any fabric textile medium.  My curtains were 72 inches long and I went with 8 inch stripes.

There are some cons to the project.  It used an awful lot of paint.  For four curtains I used a sample pot of paint, plus a quart, and I was scraping the bottom of the quart to finish the last curtain.  I only got one coat on each curtain, and they definitely could have used a second coat.  I'd probably go with a gallon if I were doing this again.

Even though I would classify myself as a careful painter, there are a ton of mistakes on these curtains.

Fabric is not a forgiving medium for painting; you can't wipe paint off if you get it in the wrong spot.  There are a lot of splatters from the roller and a number of spots where I accidentally brushed the white stripe.  Paint also makes the fabric fairly stiff.  But the mistakes are not that noticeable from a few feet away, so we'll live with them.

All in all, though, I'm happy with how they came out.  Since I already owned the curtains, this project cost me about $20 in paint, so it a pretty inexpensive way to get the look of wide-striped curtains.


3 comments:

  1. they look awesome! you should paint me some curtains for my dining room!

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  2. They look lovely! The room looks really great.

    ReplyDelete

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