Dropcloth Curtains

I centered my bed on the back wall of my bedroom because it's the best place for it given the room's dimensions. The only problem is that the headboard overlaps half of the window on that wall and the whole thing just looks silly. So, I decided to solve the problem with curtains.

I was going to need a lot of really long curtains to accomplish the task and I wanted them to be heavy. I decided to go with canvas. The problem is, I needed a little under 24 yards of fabric and canvas fabric ranges between $6 & $10/yard. So. Not. Happening.

Canvas painter's dropcloths, on the otherhand, are about $10 for a 6'x8' at Walmart. I bought 3 of them and spent $30 instead of $148. Booyah!! And the really great thing about drop cloths is that all of the edges are already finished. Big time saver!

I washed & dried them and they were beyond wrinkly. So I used a spray bottle filled with water to dampen section of the drop cloth and ironed the wrinkles out. Trust me, you want to drench the fabric with that spray bottle. Those are some very stubborn wrinkles.

I then folded over one edge 4 inches and ironed and pinned it into place.

Then I sewed the fold into place along the finished edge.

I stole a 1x2x8 piece of wood from the lumber pile in the Sandwich Shoppe and slid the curtains onto it. Who needs a curtain rod when you have 1x2s?

I cut 4 one inch pieces of 1x2 and screwed them into the wall on a level line. One at either end and one in between each of the curtain panels. Then I screwed the 1x2x8 with the curtains already on it into those 4 pieces. Perfectly secure! And ta da! You can't even tell I used a simple piece of scrap lumber.

Does the curtain look crooked? I swear I used a level. The problem isn't the curtain. The problem is that when you live in a rickety old house, none of the ceilings or floors are level. None. of. them. In fact, they are very slanted. Like, hey watch the pencil scurry to the other side of the house slanted. I'll fix it later. The curtains, not the floors.

To block the light that was coming through the curtain from the window that I had covered up on the left side, I covered the window with a black trashbag. It worked perfectly and no one ever has to see it.

And that's how I made and hung canvas drop cloths in my bedroom. I'm not done though. I have a bunch of bedroom related tasks to complete before I'll share the whole room with you.