NaNoBlogMo2 - Sea Tea Studio Curtain

 

Anyone who has known me for longer then 15 minutes knows I'm an improvisor. It takes up the majority of my non-working and non-sleeping time. In exchange for my life, soul and at times my sanity, being in Sea Tea has also given me a hobby that pays for itself, a ton of wonderful/odd/unique/ hilarious/fantastic opportunities, and most importantly some amazing and talented friends that are more like family.

One of the wonderful things that Sea Tea was able to do recently was to start renting our own studio space. There is a great article about it HERE. We are having the official grand opening next week (contact me if you are interested in attending), but we've already been holding rehearsals, classes and mixers in it for over a month.

We've already spent some time painting/cleaning/moving stuff in/getting the place presentable. Part of what I was assigned to do, because of my crafty nature, was make a stage curtain. Although the studio is not an official theater space, we still needed a back wall to perform in front of. And the back wall we set has a doorway leading into the green room (aka the lounge, aka "The Tea Room"). So Vlad got some blackout curtain material, I lugged my sewing machine to the studio and I set to work. (P.S. Did I mention I got a sewing machine for Christmas last year? It was my father's idea, which makes me smile.)

I measured about a thousand times, and still cut everything with a ton of leeway just to be safe. Casey, one of our newest members, was super helpful in pinning all the  long edges so all I had to do was run the loooooong hems through. (This made me laugh as it was always my job to pin while my mother sewed when we did projects together.) While we were doing that, Dan and Vlad were securing the hooks to hang the curtain rod. That way, once every other edge was done, I could hang the curtain exactly where it was going to be and pin it exactly how we wanted it (with a bit extra fabric at the bottom to pool and block the light from the green room). Other than a short break for a road trip to go get more thread (I stupidly and rather unlike my normal overpreparedness did not bring a spare spool) I (and my super pinner Casey) worked without stopping from the first measure & cut to the final hang up.

I tend to work better with deadlines. I started making a sweater blanket in January (remember in my hobby bucket list from last year I said I wanted to make a sweater blanket?) as the first project I was working on with my new sewing machine. I was working at a pretty fast pace, too, but then I hit a roadblock of a broken needle and have not worked on the project since. Because we were having some other improv people in the studio the next day, I wanted the curtain DONE. So one mad sewing marathon happened.

The only tip/crafty detail/etc that I can really mention for this story (cuz it doesn't feel like this one has a point) is that I tried to add weight to the bottom of the curtain as much as possible to help with the pooling. It also keeps the curtain in place while people go through, and stops it from billowing in breezes and such. I weighted the curtain by folding up all the excess fabric instead of cutting it off before I hemmed, and also by inserting curtain weights into the bottoms on the corners. I think the  end result looks nice and next I plan to make matching curtains for all the windows.

Mileage: 3.25