Labor of love....?

I didn't realize that when we moved here, that I was afraid to really dig into decorating the girls rooms because the fear of us moving after only 2 years.  So other projects were put ahead of the fun stuff..painting, hanging pictures, moving furniture (which we actually have done a lot of switching of kids rooms...a topic for another day).  Toward the end of summer I started to tackle painting rooms.
An old friend had moved into the area and I was inspired to actually put this house in MY order.  So I tended to steal some of her ideas.  She sent me a picture of her sweet babies room and I just loved it.  Painting was the easy part...a can of paint is rather inexpensive.  I chose Benjamin Moore's Owl Gray (bc my friend did...and it looked great).  So I drove to the local shop, so I could take it to Home Depot to have them color match.  When I handed him the card, the clerk told me I didn't need the card, that they had the colors on file.  I don't know if that is true for all Home Depots, but I was excited about this because the closest Benjamin Moore isn't close...
But the curtains....

Those babies were from Pottery Barn Kids and I needed four panels.  No way with preschool, three kids in expensive activities could I fathom paying for four panels (remember I am a real mom with a real budget).   Then I remembered something I had pinned on Pintrest a while back.  Now to go find it.  It was Anthropology inspired ruffle curtains...I found it  HERE  PERFECT!!!  Her tutorial is pretty good so I really wont go do a tutorial but give you some advice I found.
First of all, she used a queen sheet cut in half to make the curtains and then three twin flat sheets for the ruffles.  I found something cheaper.  I went to Ikea (I am lucky to have one close) and bought two sets of their curtains, Vivan and 6 (I need to make four panels) twin flat sheets, Knoppa.  This brought the budget WAY down!  These total were $43.92 (plus tax).  Way better!!!  However this room faces the front of the house and gets the most sun.  So for privacy reasons and to decrease heat I decided to add a liner.  I opted to not get the full black out (because they didn't have enough in stock and I am inpatient) because they were almost to heavy for such light weight curtains.  I ended up going with something lighter..I believe it was called suede.  It was back by all the blackout liners.  It was on sale and I had a coupon...but it was still over $30.  I got 9 yards because I was cheap and had to do some joining of panels.
The first panel took the longest.  I cut the curtain to the size of half a queen sheet (so I could follow the tutorial).  If you aren't going to line the curtain you can leave one of the finished edges in tact.  I left the top until the very end, so I had enough length.
I followed the directions to make the ruffles from the tutorial.  This is definitely not a quick task...especially when making 40 ruffles (I had 10 per panel which is different from the tutorial).  I did the first two panels first and then many weeks later (because of traveling) I did the other two.  So I would make a goal, like hem 10 ruffles or as many as I could in an hour.  This is very time consuming project!!!  So take the pressure off, give yourself plenty of time and just bang it out an hour at a time.
To ruffle each strip I found it the easiest (of course at the end) to fold each strip of fabric in half and hang on to both sides of the bottom string and ruffle both sides toward the center (or to the bottom since they are folded in half).
Since I was making so many I measure where I attached each ruffle and did the same for all the other four.  If a ruffle was way off I just laid the panel I was working on, next to the completed panel and adjusted the height, so that the bottoms matched.
Attaching the liner is just like any other liner.  I have made curtains before so I just kinda winged it.  I am sure you can find a tutorial out there!
For the top...so for my last ruffle, I folded the fabric that was left (the top of the curtain down over all the ruffles and stitched just below where I attached the last ruffle.  The I folded it up...then attached my liner. After cutting off the top part of the original curtain, it was too long and I didn't need it.  I made a pocket rod with the liner and the curtain.  And done!

Don't mind the space around the windows.  I have been waiting for the hubby to put up the molding we removed before I painted.

Labor of love.....more like very, VERY frugal.  Now my eldest wants these....sigh.

I wrote this post while the kids were running around so if you have questions, please ask!

I hope you enjoyed the first post...my I wanted this, so I made that!