French Pleat Lined Drapes

When we moved into our house (summer 2012) I knew that this room needed drapes and I wanted them to be a statement piece instead of simple drapes.  I requested a quote from a custom drapery place nearby and got the biggest sticker shock!  It was then that I decided that some day I would make my own drapes and save a ton of money (so delusional!).

Sometime last year while visiting my cousin in McAllen, TX we shopped for fabric and I found this fabulous tangerine taffeta that would be perfect for this project.  The price was good and so I bought the taffeta as well as sheer fabric to make the inner drape.  The fabric sat in my closet (hidden away so that I wouldn't be reminded often) for almost a year until the time came when I could not postpone it any longer.

This is the hardest project I've tackled so far.  It consists of 2 VERY WIDE drape panels that have lining and french pleats.  There were a few mistakes during the construction but not severe enough that I couldn't recover.  I still want to go back and tweak some things here and there.

fabric: Taffeta
lining: Roc-Lon Sonata Sateen Fabric
inter-lining (going back to add this): Hanes White English Bump Drapery Interlining

Thank goodness for Pinterest since that's where I got the tutorial... 

Each panel is 4 yards wide and over 3 yards long... a bit heavy when it's all put together.

Tag Sale

So this weekend is our neighborhood yard sale... we have one in the Spring and one in the Fall.  We had some stuff in our garage that we wanted to sell (and some friends brought their stuff, too!) so I did some research on Pinterest and decided to name ours 'Tag Sale' instead of yard-sale or garage-sale.  The different name made ours stand out and people said they stopped by simply to see what it was... they ended up browsing and buying stuff!

Here's the sign I made with my Silhouette Cameo, poster board and a clear trash bag to protect from rain.

Due to the rain, we setup everything in the garage.  We covered the garage walls with tan bed-sheets and organized everything by type.  I used my table covers to cover all the tables and placed made sure that only a few things were on the floor.

All items had a perforated price tag that I cut using my Silhouette Cameo.  Each family had their perforated price-tags in their own color which made it easy to add up at the end of the day.  The cashier table included the Square app to take credit card payments and that was a blessing!  I will definitely use it again.

The Tag Sale was a success!  We sold about 75% of the items and made over $500!  I put my handmade bags on a table and I sold over half!  The setup and organization took a few days due to the rain and my over-analytic mindset. 

Here are some pics of the layout:

Window Cover

This weekend was spent working on a permanent window cover for a window located above our front-door and quite inaccessible.  This window provides PLENTY of sunshine and I've wanted to cover it since we moved in (May 2012).  This is what it looked like before I began my project:

Here's the project in progress.  I used linen for each side and light black-out material. I wanted it to look like slats... almost like a shutter.

And here's the final result... not completely satisfied but it does the job until I can get back to it.  It has made a TON of difference... Texas sunshine can be a quite much at times!  The pics were taken while we were painting but that's finished now.