Once, while renovating a house, I told my mother that I was feeling completely overwhelmed by the task and that I couldn't even see what project to begin next as there were just too many. She essentally told me to take a deep breath and calmly look around; establish what the "single most awfulest" thing currenty was, ignore everything else, and just focus on that one thing. Sage advice, and I've been using it since on all fronts both personal and professional.
We've made quite a number of improvements to our Airstream, but the thing I have most abhored from day one was the goofusy blue palm tree curtains. Hate. I tried an experiment with dying the ones in the bedroom and that worked out fine, but I really wanted something more classy for the front, and in a different material. I'd looked all over at so many options, but finally one day it hit me: white pleather! Easy to sew, doesn't need a second layer of privacy fabric as many other options would, and it was cheap. And so began my Saturday sewing project ...
Badger took this photo while I was sewing away ... ugh.
Here are the original curtains. It isn't so much that the curtains are blue, or that they necessarily have palm trees on them—although that's highly suspect to me being that I prefer cold to warm, and drizzle to sun—it's that the awful blue stripes on the cushions totally CLASH with the blue of the curtains. Anyway, I digress ...
The original curtains ...
Getting the curtains off of their track is a matter of removing two screws. Couldn't be easier. Thank you Airstream for not making me reverse engineer the blessed curtain rods (and for not making my husband mad when I have to break something to make it work the way I want it to). Poor thing.
Cutting the fabric couldn't have been easier. The original curtains devoid of 90-degree corners (everything in an Airstream seems to have a curve somewhere), and I wanted them to fit slightly differently anyway, so I experimented ... and it worked flawlessly. Granted, I am sure that if the fabric had been expensive, it would have failed miserably.
Smartass husband says that maybe now I'll be one of those wives who deploys seasonal curtains. I'll show you seasonal. I'm gonna make a set that show a timeline of dinosaurs stalking and then devouring the Easter Bunny (I have been skeptical, always skeptical of that silly egg-laying rabbit—it's just unnatural; if only we had an Easter Echidna I'd get right onboard!).
Sorry ... back to the curtains. One of the things that took a great deal of time was anchoring 80 or so elastic G-slides to the new curtains. I had purchased 100 of these in advance from an online supplier for about $30 and they worked perfectly. Thanks Vintage Trailer Supply!
G-slides and associated elastic bits.
Once I got the hang of it and found the right settings on the sewing machine, the G-slides were easier and easier to attach. The last panel of the four only took me 40 minutes from raw fabric to hung curtain!
And here are the new curtains: closed and then opened, and then at night. We were stopped during a road trip which is why it all looks so sparse (everything was stowed for the road).
Yes, that's the Badger doing his rounds outside while I check on the inside ...
Oh, and I am LOVING my new sewing machine, a Brother CS60001. I have never owned a new sewing machine (only older ones that always seemed to need constant repair and attention—was it me?), so this buttery object that I could thread with my eyes closed (no, really, it's that easy!) was a great coup for me. And get this, it fits into a special cubby by the door of the Airstream that I never quite felt I had found the perfect use for—by an eighth of an inch! In fact, it's so perfectly snugged in there that I needn't even secure it when we travel. Epic win!