Boring kids' curtains and what to do about it

Let's face it. When it comes to kids' ready made curtains, they are not fun. Even if you can get over the boring-factor and the why-so-weirdly-short-factor, the quality is often unacceptably bad. I have had simple roman shades give up in less than a month. Supposedly, they were made for kids' rooms, so I had ambitious expectations. Not so much.

Living extensive periods of time without blackout curtains is not an option for an 8 year old who wakes up with the sun (and specially for his parents). After the roman shades gave up, I obviously really had to do something about it. After spending several desperate hours going through the available boring and ugly curtains, I decided to move from ready made to home made.

I knew my artistic and design savvy son would like to choose his color and pattern. So, first we surfed some fabric sites together. Surprisingly easily, we settled to two space themed fabrics from the custom printer Spoonflower. We decided to have a bit fun and have one of the windows decorated with a different panel. Because the fabrics were both by the same very talented designer, Jennifer Wambach, we were still able to create a cohesive look to the room.

If you can sew straight line, you can sew curtains. Basically, I sewed the panel and blackout fabric into a gigantic sack. Then I turned it inside out (right sides out) and overstitched. The only thing left was to cut the holes to grommets (my package came with a template) and snap them to place. Just a few hours later, I was done! Well, until I'll start again and sew some new curtain panels for the jealous little brother.