Monday, February 25, 2013

My Curtain Dilemma

I've mentioned before that my dollhouse was built from plans, rather than a kit. Unlike most front-opening houses, my dollhouse has windows on all four sides. While I love the light this lets into the house, it does create some problems inside.

The windows are uniformly spaced across the back of the house, but the room layout is a little off center. This means that the windows in the nursery and dining room are jammed into corners of the room, while there's only a centimeter or so of space to the left of one of the windows in the music room, upstairs hall, and kitchen.

 The nursery is pretty cramped to begin with, so I'll probably just add a little balloon shade. I'm torn between two fabrics. One option is plain white batiste, which may be too much white when I finally get around to finishing the crib canopy. The second is a pretty but bright pink flowered voile, which is a little intense for the space.
In the kitchen, I got around the corner window problem with wooden blinds. Mom made the blinds for me from coffee stirs and seed bead spacers.

In the music room on the floor above, I'm completely stumped. I've always imagined huge, blue damask curtains in this room, but the windows are on the smaller side, and that corner window has little room for anything elaborate.

The hall is less of a problem, since it only has the one window on the back wall, and another on the dollhouse door. I'm pretty sure I want to use an asymmetric curtain over this window,  but I can't seem to settle on a fabric. I will have to shift the artwork around a little since I didn't think about curtains when I hung these paintings.

I'm determined to tackle these curtains soon, but I honestly find the overall number of windows in my house, and especially the number of corner windows completely intimidating. I've been reading and re-reading the fabulous tips,tricks and tutorials from a couple blogs in order to get my nerve up, but I'd welcome any other tips or links to tutorials. These are the tutorials I'm relying on most at the moment:

Ray of Modern Miniatures has a very detailed two part tutorial

Casey makes curtains look easy with her ceiling tile and pin method

I love the thin fabrics and overall lightness of Josje's curtains

John of Merriman Park passed along some very useful information about making fringe and curtain rings.

7 comments:

  1. It sounds exciting with all the windows. I am well aware that it presents special challenges. Your room is very beautiful and I can read that you are uncompromising. You want only the best. I look forward to seeing more.
    Thanks for the links.

    Hugs
    Wyrna

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  2. Hello Eliza, thank you for the links about making curtains. All windows in my house are still without curtains, but now at least I know where to find inspiration and tutorials.

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  3. Hi Eliza! Besides all the tutorials available on line, there is a book by Sue Heaser called Dolls House Do-It-Yourself. If you can't get it at your library, it's available on Amazon. It's not a big book, sixty four pages. It contains a ton of information. I love her books. I have them all.

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  4. Sorry, I just remembered that I forgot to add the book is called Curtains. It's from the Dolls House Do-It-Yourself series.

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  6. Thanks for the recomondation Lucille! I'll have to double check my bookshelves- I know I have a bunch of Sue Heaser books but I don't remember seeing Curtains.

    -Eliza

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  7. Hi
    I love your music room wallpaper and how it all ties in with the other rooms - and that hallway I love so much!
    I have so far managed to avoid curtains so I'll pass, and leave the more knowledgeable Minis to give advise.
    Hugs
    Simon

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