Possibly the Cheapest Extra-Wide Curtains Ever

After months of trying to figure out what kind of curtains I wanted in our master bedroom, I finally made a bold and courageous decision:

White curtains.

Lame. Safe. Expected. Boring. Yada yada.

Guess what, though?

I sort of really like them.

I ended up with easy-on-the-eye white for the following reasons:

1. I’ve learned that I do not personally like to live in rooms with more than two graphic/patterned curtain panels. It’s too much for my personal taste and I’d prefer to bring in pattern in smaller doses, like a pillow or two or ten. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy looking at rooms with multiple bold and graphic curtains. But living in a room like that—no thanks. It’s sort of like how I’ve figured out that I love to look at rooms with a lot of fun color, but not live in rooms with a lot of fun color.

2. Because of #1, I knew I wanted something solid, and we’ve already got blue in the ceiling and on the chair, and gray on the walls and comforter. White it is.

The best part about these curtains is that they cost me a grand total of $35 for all four panels. They’re made out of 90” muslin, which was on sale for $5 a yard and I had an additional 30% off coupon. Thank you, Joann Fabrics. I also only had to hem the top and bottom of each panel because the sides were already finished. Thank you again, Joann Fabrics.

I’m not entirely sure what muslin is supposed to be used for, but when I googled it, I found the following idea:

One of the less well known uses of muslin is as a filter for fine wine or port to prevent sediment from getting into the decanter. Typically this is accomplished by pouring the wine through a funnel with muslin stretched over the smaller end.

Who knew? Here I’ve been choking down all that plankton and sludge in my homemade wine.

In addition to being a great sediment-buster, though, the fact that muslin comes in extra-wide widths (it actually went up to 120” but that seemed a bit excessive for my purposes) makes it especially good for DIYing curtains. I looked at other cotton fabrics that were around the same price per yard, but they were 45” wide, and would have made for pretty skimpy and super lame-o window treatments. The muslin is fairly thin, but there’s so much bunching and scrunching going on that you can’t even tell.

As a final touch, we replaced the original finals with finials from curtain rods that we took down because they wouldn’t extend wide enough.

Hooray!

Do you remember what this room used to look like? All I remember is something about birdhouses, a boob light, and a textured ceiling. Let’s take a look.

This next one isn’t the same angle, (if only you knew when you moved in what angles of the room you’d want to capture for before-after purposes) but it’s the same window. The wall to the right of the window in the birdhouse picture is the closet that we removed.

You can read about the madness of our master bedroom renovation here.

So…that’s all I’ve got for my cheapest extra-wide curtains ever (possibly). Who else has made some cheap curtains? Share links if you’d like to! And what besides home-décor-aisle-fabric have you made curtains out of? Have you ever strained your plankton with muslin? Better yet, have you ever made curtains out of plankton? Do tell. :)

***Linking this up to Serenity Now and the Tater Tots & Jello Weekend Wrap-Up Party!***