Drop Cloth It

In our apartment we used to have a nice, big, walk-in closet where we could store all of our clothes and junk. In this house, however, we share a very small, doorless closet. Yes, doorless!  I have no idea where the doors have wandered off to but once our stuff was shoved under the bed and into the closet, it was a big, ugly mess. 

We also have an area under the stairs where I like to keep all the kitty-related items for Ian and Zelda (the other cats have their things upstairs) and it really needed a curtain to hide all the unsightliness. 

I wanted to find the cheapest, most durable curtains for both of these spaces and I remembered a project that Chris Loves Julia did using drop cloths as curtains. I thought it was a brilliant idea and they turned out so lovely that I decided to give it a try! Mine aren't as fancy as hers, they're rather simple in comparison but I'm open to the idea of giving them some beautiful embellishment when I'm not so busy getting other things in order.

I headed over to Lowe's to pick up my 6ft by 9ft drop cloth for about $10. They turned out to be the perfect size and the price was right, score!

After sitting around for a week or two... I finally got around to washing them and drying them to make sure they loosened up a little bit. It's hard for me to wait to start a project and usually try to do anything I can to avoid washing fabric first before a project but this was pretty necessary. If you don't wash them first they're a little too stiff to be beautifully, freely hanging.

Despite taking them out of the dryer immediately, they were very, very wrinkled. That meant... more ironing. (Did I mention I hate sewing and ironing?)

Just look at that mess...

After ironing both drop cloths I then hung them up on their rods to measure how far down they would hang (I used tension rods for both spaces which allowed me to just hang the fabric over and eyeball where I needed to cut off the excess). 

Then, snip-snip...

I made the curtain rod pocket about 3 inches wide and hid the Heat N' Bond along the rough edge (I didn't care what it looked like from the other side since no one would ever see it and kept the edges raw). I didn't end up hemming the bottom since the drop clothes come already hemmed well enough. 

I waited about ten minutes for the tape to fully cool and bond which was difficult because I'm impatient. 

Then... ta da!

And the cat area is now hidden! (I'm not showing you a 'before'... I didn't think you guys would want to see some litter boxes...).

They only took me about an hour and a half from the initial ironing to hanging them up. I'm loving how much better my room looks and I don't have to stare at my closet disaster!