Where did I put that January to-do list? I just completed another unfinished project that was lurking on the list, and I need the satisfaction of drawing a line through words on paper. I've had a pile of fabric on my sewing desk since October, when I abandoned it halfway through making curtains for my dressing room. I got one set completed and up, before guests and parties and games and multiple medical interventions got the better of me. I've had the ironing board set up in my bedroom since I started prepping those curtains to sew, and for months it has become yet another shit receptacle in my house. I had to unbury it from under clothes worn for too little time to launder, a purse I stopped using after a month, and more paper than I know what to do with, just to be able to press and prepare the satin trim that extends each curtain just enough to close over my wide windows. (I made the mistake of trying to make one set in my bedroom merely the width of the fabric, and they look flat and inadequate when they are closed.) I had purchased the fabric for these curtains way back at the end of 2015, when I first painted that room, but I let it sit in a JoAnn's bag under the day bed for nearly two years, gathering dust and a thick coat of guilt.
I have decided I really hate making curtains. They seem like they should be so simple: just hem a few rectangles of fabric and boom. Curtains. It is never so easy. Unless you want to lie in bed, noticing a half-assed job every time you look at your walls, you have to meticulously iron a crisp edge onto carefully measured folds. You have to match patterns, so you have to purchase way more fabric than you think you need. You need to line them or they will be woefully translucent, showing off everything inside your house to the outside at night, and not darkening the inside enough during the day. (Maybe you don't think of them in those terms, but for those of us with migraines triggered by light since we were in kindergarten, this is a real concern.) And all of this obsessive attention to detail is just for plain, flat rectangles held in place with clips on rings. I can't imagine how crazy I would be if I tried to do the kind with pockets for the rods to go through, or significantly worse, pleats. Thank heavens those went out of fashion years ago. The best thing about making curtains is once they are done, they are in place for years. Most people don't have a continuously rotating wardrobe of curtains for their homes.
After living in suspended animation for most of 2016 and 2017, I'm finally starting to figure out what I want to do to this house. I still haven't unpacked all of those boxes I promised myself I'd address, but slowly I am working my way through the bottleneck of projects that kept me from feeling fully moved in to this house. Once we get through those things (like the curtains, and the art that is finally getting hung after two years of gathering its own dust and guilt), I can move on to sorting, donating, and using. I haven't forgotten my interest in the microfad of Swedish Death Cleaning. I just got distracted.
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