you raise me up.

Over the summer, I created these strappingly striped, painted curtains for our formal living and dining room.

Ever since, I have been head-over-heels in lurve with them! Maybe I smirk every time I walk by them...maybe...

Well I still lurve them, but lately I have been seeing this image pop up all over Pinterest and I started feeling a bit lurve-less.

{via}

You might not be able to tell, but my fabulously striped curtains are totally guilty of the "don't" category. Do you see how they are hung just above the window and cut off about 2/3 of our incredible natural light?

If you can't tell from the picture, just take my word that they do. Designers everywhere should be ashamed. I was.

Not wanting to completely trash my striped curtains to bring them up to designer code, I decided that I could simply add one more foot-long stripe to the bottom of the curtains and they would be floor-to-ceiling magnificence. But rather than just adding on a stripe of white, I thought I could make the curtains even more fabulous by adding on a pop of color!

That's when I found this minty butte at Joann's for a whopping $2.99 per yard.

Combine that with my 50% off coupon and I almost felt guilty walking out of the store with my 4 yards of fabric...almost.

I began by ironing all of the fabric to get all of the kinks out. I then laid out the fabric and cut four, 2 and 1/2 foot strips:

I did 2 1/2 feet because I wanted to add on a 1 foot stripe at the bottom of each curtain. I planned to sew a "pocket" out of the mint fabric to give the bottom stripe a finished look without having to sew a hem. Therefore, a 1 foot stripe made by folding one piece of fabric in half = 2 feet with a 1/2 inch of wiggle room. Clear as mud? Good. Let's continue.

I folded my 2 1/2 foot strip of fabric in half:

Then ironed the crease to make sure the fold stayed while I sewed:

I then sewed both, one-foot sides of the fabric and the folded edge to create a "pocket":

I did not sew the top, "open" portion of the pocket because I knew I would be sewing that to the curtain directly. Why sew something twice when you could just sew it once, right?

I then turned the "pocket" right-side-out...

...and ironed the edges to create a nice, sharp corner:

I loved that I had a perfectly straight, sharp-cornered stripe and didn't have to hem a thing!

Now that my bottom stripe was sewn, I pinned it to the bottom of the existing curtain so that the mint stripe would be 1 foot in length, and trimmed off any excess fabric that was overlapping with the curtain.

All that was left to do was sew a straight line attaching the mint stripe to the curtain! Thank you, Lord, for sewing machines that make life easy!

I then repeated the exact same process on the remaining three curtains! The entire project took about two hours - can't complain there!

The results, you ask? Well, if I was in lurve before, I suppose you could call me tragically love sick over these things!

I am so smitten by the little pop of mint at the bottom of the curtains! What a lovely surprise!

From a designer's standpoint, let's have a reminder of how curtains should be hung...

...followed by a little before shot of my designer's don't:

I think it's safe to say that the after-shot can be safely placed in the "do" column now!

And the Lord said, "Let there be light"! Maybe those designers know what their talking about after all.

Not wanting any room to be left looking like the short, squat, step-sister, I raised the curtains in our master bedroom:

Then, for the den, I purchased some Waverly curtains from Lowe's that were 84 inches long. 

Wanting them to be floor-to-ceiling, however, I purchased an extra curtain, cut it into fourths (one strip for each of my four curtains), and sewed on an extra foot from the extra curtain to each curtain to make them all floor to ceiling!

{Deuce was clearly taxed by all that sewing...}

If it isn't obvious already, I think it's safe to say that my New Year's Resolution will be to sew anything that moves...or is too short. Happy New Year, y'all!