I had been dreading my first solo attempt at sewing. Threading the machine terrified me, so it stayed in its box for the past six months.

But a great project presented itself to ease me into working with it again.

More or less this mess was taunting me…

This is our spare bedroom that has been like this since I moved down in May. It was time to make something happen with it. We have one storage room off the carport, but that has turned into Tom’s “workshop” so we didn’t have anywhere else to put all this. Into the spare bedroom it went!

So we decided we would clean this up and make a partition to basically hide our storage within the second bedroom. I feel like Monica on Friends…

We bought fabric to make curtains that we could easily slide open when we need to find something. We also wanted to do bright curtains because we are not going to be painting any walls since our time here will be too short lived to worry about the tedious task of painting. It is a great way to brighten up the drab white walls without all the work!

Here is the fabric I bought.

I am really in love with this color combo right now! So cheerful!

We bought conduit tubes and two curtain stabilizers for the rod since it does have to go the length of the room. We decided to make all of our own stuff since actual curtain items are super pricey.

Tom also put a metal rod inside the conduit to stabilize it a little more since it was pretty long and sagged a little bit. (I really failed at getting pictures of this.)

We did have to cut the tube down to size so you will want to make sure you have the right tools that can cut thick plastic and metal. Tom used a hack saw.

I had to sew the top and bottom, but the sides were fine to leave as they are since we used the full length of the fabric. Since it was a straight line with no backing or anything, this was a pretty simple job. Seriously, the toughest part was threading that blasted machine. After some pouting, YouTube searching, and a very patient husband, I finally got the bobbin and thread where it needed to be. I am a little embarrassed now thinking about how long this part of the process actually took, but I conquered it!

On the top, I did leave enough to make a pocket of sorts that the rod could go through. You can see that in the above picture.

It did take out about a third of the room,  but that is OK considering we didn’t acknowledge this room existed in the past 3 months.

I am really in love with it. I sat in the rocking chair for a good 10 minutes admiring our work.

Look at how much Army stuff we have! Those file cabinets are full of gear. One drawer is full of all the sets of Eye-pro (or what I call them, Army goggles). And we had more gear a few days ago. Tom turned in a car load of multicam stuff right before we packed this all back here.

And now that I think I know how to sew, there may be some new projects on the horizon. I hope it doesn’t take me six months to get that thing out again!

It was really nice to get this all cleaned up. It is one of those things that just makes you feel good and accomplished! And just in time for our family to come for a visit this weekend!