A Stitch in Time

Today

Procrastination, they say, is the thief of time. Well, I've certainly been procrastinating over finishing the lounge curtains.

I bought the fabric, at a fabulous price, about 5 years ago. The idea was that we needed winter weight curtains to keep in the warmth and out the cold.

About 2 years ago, I measured the windows and cut out the curtains. I started on the biggest ones. At every turn I made a complete pig's ear; joining pieces against the nap, stitching the tabs inside the lining, mismatching the pattern. I put the stuff away and it's been glaring accusingly at me ever since.

About 3 days ago I heaved the lot out again and couldn't understand why I'd made such a bad job. "You'd think I was a complete novice" I railed at my Long-Suffering, railing even more when he suggested I chuck the lot out and start again. I've nearly finished the dining room curtains - they're going to look very nice, I hope.

In My Day

Novice I am not. I made my first pair of curtains when I was about 18 and had moved into a room on the attic floor of 4BH. This room sported a dormer window with a semi-circular top where it was impossible to fit a curtain rail. So I made the curtains curved to match, with stitched-in gathers. They were permanently attached to the frames and drawn aside into tie-backs and were made of lime green rep. I never got around to recovering the floor which was red lino, so I don't think the room looked very stylish.

When we moved into the flat at Belmont in 1971 we had practically nothing. But I did insist on curtains. I bought some voile to make nets and some brown-and-orange fabric to make curtains. These I stitched, using my trusty Necchi, on a rickety card-table which was our only surface at the time. While we were at the flat I also made curtains (blue) for the bedroom and nursery ones for Lizzie.

Paul often reminds me of the curtains we had in the bedroon of our first house in Rowan Avenue; I think because he liked the name: "cherry-berry-bim". By this time we'd risen to the dizzy heights of being able to buy fabric at Habitat, and I made a table-cloth from the same fabric and equipped our lounge windows with a rather nice slub cotton which the gerbils later chewed (I remember doing an almost invisible darn).

Even later I made curtains for others as a way of earning extra cash (where did I find the time?). I remember one ghastly pair of huge brocade curtains which had an enormous pattern repeat of Arcadian nymphs & shepherds. My client had skimped on the fabric and I spent hours laying it out on the floor, shooing away cats and children, trying to line up the Phyllises and Chloes correctly. I'm not sure I ever got it quite right, but the customer seemed pleased. The fabric was so tough, it broke dozens of my machine needles.

Anyway, the point is (and always will be) that I absolutely hate making curtains and don't find it at all rewarding.

And procrastination, in the form of this blog, is busy stealing the time I should be spending in front of the sewing machine.