DIY Ruffled Curtains

It isn't very often that the university closes on a snow day, let alone close for the cold weather. Imagine my surprise to discover 10+ texts from classmates and friends while briefly glancing at my phone on Monday afternoon stating that school had been cancelled for Tuesday (I believe a lot of exclamation marks were involved). Anyways, a day free of school, homework, AND work... what's a girl to do!? 

Well, I finally convinced myself that it was time to finish a project I had started weeks ago. 

If you follow me on instagram, you probably saw this picture quite some time ago.

And if you follow me on twitter, you probably saw a tweet that went something like this around that same time: "I have a love-hate relationship with my sewing machine"

Well, yesterday I was finally able to post this picture:

It would be safe to say that it was a DIY project gone wrong, and you would be absolutely right! I found this tutorial from the Jedi Craft Girl a while back, and I followed it pretty much to a tee. I was so excited to lighten up the living room and ditch the plain dark brown curtains that have been hanging for so long. The problem... I am not an expert sewer! After hours, I finally realized that I needed to bump my tension down to zero and my stitch spacing all the way up in order to create the perfect ruffle. Well, the perfect ruffle never happened... for ALL SIX ruffles. By the time I got my ruffles figured out and pinned into place, the bobbin knotted up countless amount of times, to the point where I was swearing under my breath and grunting. The dog thought she did something wrong, and the hubs came in to check on me a number of times. CRAFT PROJECT GONE VERY WRONG!

By the time I finished my one curtain, I was so sick of the process that I didn't touch my sewing machine for two weeks. My living room window was decorated with one new beautiful curtain, while the other was still the dark brown old curtain. Every time I even thought about working on that second curtain, I cringed. 

I finally got sick of looking at the half and half curtains, so yesterday afternoon, I got to work.

The second curtain was put together flawlessly! There was not a single hiccup involved in the making and hanging of the second curtain and I could not be happier. What first took my hours upon hours each night only took me one and a half hours the second time around... talk about a dream come true!!

SO ladies and gentleman, I now present to you my brand new ruffled curtains!

Aren't they beautiful?! Now that all is said and done, they really were worth all the trouble. Sometimes projects turn out to be just as easy as you thought, and sometimes they don't! 

On the bright side though, I can now sew one mean ruffle!

Have you ever had a project go horribly wrong?

I still get worked up thinking about the sewing machine every time I look at those curtains. Too bad a lot of my upcoming projects will require me to use it... I need a vacation!

Would you like to see what else I did on my "cold day"? 

I did a whole lot of HTML-ing to better organize my project page! Check it out here: http://melaniegetsmarried.blogspot.com/p/projects_9.html

Happy Thursday!