D.I.Y. Mother and Daughter time!
After I managed to make myself try a new project on the sewing machine my daughter ended up with her much needed curtains; FINALLY 🙂 We didn’t leave it at that though, we have discovered many d.i.y. projects are actually affordable and practical so we decided to fancy these pretty purple curtains up a little.
Pompoms happened to be one of the most enjoyable things my mother taught me to make as a girl. They lead me into making yarn dolls but that is another story for another post. There is nothing exactly as satisfying as the process of giving a pompom its necessary hair cut…that finally cut result, a tied up bunch of yarn becomes a proper pompom.
My eldest daughter and I made about 30 pompoms after hunting through our big bag of different yarns. We settled on yellow for the majority (yellow being her favourite color) then a rustic pink and bright blue for the curtain tie backs. With the aid of a long fork we had a uniformed collection of pompoms to hang along the bottom of the curtains.
We spent an entire afternoon focused just on making a pair of long braids that would be stitched to the bottom of the curtains so we could tie the pompoms to them. We came up with an interesting method to speed this process up that involved holding the yarn in our teeth and braiding while the other person rhythmically combed the braid so it wouldn’t get tangled with the movement involved in braiding. 
Rarely have I spent such a quiet and relaxing day with my eldest daughter, working so cooperatively with one another and mutually excited about working toward rewarding results. In silence we kept up a repetitive and consistent pace, the clocks could be easily heard ticking in the kitchen and living room, the dog snoozed in his bed and our focus was easily maintained.
Another whole afternoon was spent stitching the braids to the curtain’s and then tying on each little pompom as equally spaced as possible. My hands were cramped more from this task then any other. Hanging the curtains involved climbing, grunting and sweating in the summer heat (the very heat that made these double layered curtains necessary to ensure relief from summers on slot). After I finally hung the curtains and sighed in relief my eldest son walked in and praised the result, closely followed with the comment, ‘I need curtains too. I am excited to see what you decide to do with them to make them AS unique”!
P.s. We hope to maybe string big glass beads on the tie backs and to have a decorative hook on either side for the tie backs to rest on. If we get craft again and complete those ideas I will be sure to update this post.
TTFN
Always Lady Mac an Rothaich
I sure enjoyed this and I could imagine the whole day with the quiet and the pleasure of a job well done by yourselves. Precious memories.