$8 Curtain Panels

We've now lived in this house for almost 3 1/2 years.  For the entirety of that 3 1/2 years, I have wanted to hang curtains in our living room.  But with two bay windows along with two regular windows, I knew that curtains could prove to be a costly project for this room.

Obviously, that didn't keep me from searching, though.  I knew what I was after.  I wanted something with a pattern.  Obviously, the pattern would have to have some greens, and maybe even some blues and yellows, in it to go along with our other living room decor.  Overall, I really wanted the curtains to be light and bright and to make a pretty strong statement in the room.  

And almost 3 1/2 years later, I finally found something:

Since most of you are not at our house on the regular, here's a reminder of what the windows looked like sans curtains:

And if you read the title of the post you can probably already guess what the major bonus of these babies was!  Yep, they only cost me $8 each.  If you've ever gone curtain shopping, you probably think I'm crazy, but I kid you not: $8!!!  Because, you see, here's the secret: they're not actually curtains.  They're tablecloths...from Target.

                               

Each tablecloth actually cost $16, but at 60 inches wide, I knew that would be too much for the tiny spaces between my windows.  So, I cut them in half.  I used iron-on hem tape to seal off the cut sides and also to create a pocket at the top.  The pocket worked to both shorten the curtains a bit and to give a way to hang them on a rod eventually.

It was really a pretty simple process and in about an hour, I had 8 curtain panels ready to hang!  For the record, I decided to not curtain the other two windows in the room in hopes that Josh will go along with my plan to remove the blinds from them one day and just have them look out at our beloved screened-in porch!  

So, with curtains officially secured, it was now time to begin the hunt for bay window rods to hang them on.  And let me tell you, holy mother, those things are crazy expensive!  So, of course, I came up with a DIY money-saving alternative...which I'll share with you tomorrow!