Design On A Dime Drapes!

I'm joining Susan for her Met Monday party....please be sure to see all the other creative posts on Susan's blog!

Since my re-do of my dining room I’ve been in a delimma about what to do about window treatments. I got some great suggestions from blogland and all of them were helpful. Of course, as always, budget was a factor but I didn’t want to “make do” or “settle” and be unhappy. I even bought a pair of gorgeous triple-width, lined and weighted silk drapes, hubby hung them, but they didn’t feel right. So down they came and back to the store they went.

After seeing how others have used the drop cloths as drapes, I thought, why not? I’d only be out of about $20 for a pair of them and I can customize them for my decor. So off to Lowe’s I went for my 6x9 drop cloths at about $9.00 a piece. I also replaced the “fat” curtain rod originally used at that window with a nice skinny black one. There was nothing to hanging them once the rod was installed, just used about 10 clip rings per panel and clipped the panels to those rings. While they looked good “plain” I wanted them to have a little more style so I bought a full size flat black sheet to use as a border. In the end, I cut about 30” off the drop cloths, made a 20” border for the bottom, and sewed them together. I didn’t even sew a hem but used good old stitchy witchy for the bottom and sides of the border. Since my sisal rug has a black border, I wanted to use black as the accent on the drapes. When hubby got home, he was real impressed, not to mention the total cost for this pair of window treatments ran me about $28.

Tell me what you think of my customized drop cloth drapes….

The dog likes to chew on the window sill. We’ve had it scraped and painted several times but she still chews on it!

The texture on these panels is very much like linen….another plus!

Here you can see a corner of the sisal rug with the black border

Hubby found the architectural piece over the window on the street and brought it home…..he says he’s “too good to me!”

I went ahead and set the table using a coastal theme for the summer.

The aqua star fish plates came from T.J. Maxx. The crystal are pieces we’ve picked up at auctions on the cheap!

I love the mix of creams, whites, and that yummy robins egg blue

The silverware came from Big Lots, on sale of course!

I also have used this same window treatment in our bedroom and plan on customizing them with some kind of border as well. You know you’ll be seeing those down the road!

Happy Monday!

Judy