I know I said I was going to finish up 30 Before Baby, but the other night it poured meaning that summer is officially on it’s way out and I can no longer count on the sun.  The rain stopped around 8am and the sun came out, so I figured this could be my last change to get this project done.  It’s one that I have been putting off for a while since it’s slightly experimental and has the potential to be very messy.  Those are the hardest to start.

I looked for quite some time for curtains that would add some color to Lucy’s room.  I couldn’t decide, floral, geometric, solid color, patterned, and then I came across these on none other than pinterest.

They are from anthropology and have a pretty steep price tag, but looked totally DIY’able.

I bought some cotton linen yardage a few months back when I was finishing up Lucy’s room, but couldn’t decide if I should dye the curtains or not, so instead just cut them to the appropriate length and just left them au natural.  But I’ve been super curious how they’d look in fuscia!  Here is the room before I got started.

{In my last post on Lucy’s room, I forgot to mention the sign above her bed, and her quilt, and her little Paris burp cloth. Shandra made the sign which was hanging up at my amazing wonderful shower.  She also hand stitched the burp cloth with the Eiffel Tower – incroyable!  And Sarah made the quilt hanging on the back of her crib.  Her quilts are fantastic and don’t look like your traditional stuffy old lady quilts.  Lucy is so lucky to have so many handmade things!}

I began by finding my bucket outside behind the garage with 2 inches of algea water and a pair of slimy gardening gloves.  I hosed and scrubbed it out.

Then I read the instructions (I always read instructions after I start…you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now) which require hot water.  The thought of transferring hot water from the kitchen though the house to fill the bucket sounded like too much work, so back to the original instructions I went and filled the washing machine with hot water. This made a lot more sense.  The bottle said 1/2 bottle per 3 gallons of water so I stopped the washing machine around where I thought 6 would be.

I measured from the top about 40 inches and made little pencil tick marks to give myself a rough idea of how far I’d dunk the fabric and to make sure that they were all similar.

And like the instructions said, I got all the fabric wet.

And just as I got my momentum, I heard screaming…feeding break.

Baby fed, fingers crossed, breath held…here we go.  I first lower the fabric in to the tick mark.

Then pulled it out.

{mind the shaky one handed photo.  I was holding the fabric in one hand and the phone in the other.}

I just kept dunking the fabric for about 3 minutes for each piece, trying my best to dunk to the same spot.  It’s all really just trial and error.  I definitely ended up closer to the top than 40 inches.  It’s like cutting your bangs.  You do it, then one side is shorter, so you cut the other side, but than that side is shorter so you go back to the other side.  If only I had my 4th grade school picture to prove my point.

The laundry room is right at the back door where we have a clothes line so I was able to run the fabric from the washing machine to the clothing line, only having to go about 2 feet from washer to back door.

When they were dry

Here they are all dry and ready to hem!

I used my favorite thing in the world…well maybe not my favorite, but pretty darn close.  It makes things so much easier.

Then it was just a matter of ironing even hems around the fabric.

It’s how I do my projects…With baby and coffee in pajama pants.  What could be better?!

Once they were all hemmed along the sides and the top I laid them out to double check that the dye line was even on each panel.

Once I had them hemmed at the bottom – boom!  Time to hang up!

The rooms not very big, so it’s pretty difficult to get a lot of different angles :)  There are only 2 that the curtains can be photographed from.  I’m loving the extra punch of color that they add to the room.  They aren’t too busy, but definitely add some interest!