Dorcas House provides emergency services like food, shelter, clothing, and crisis intervention to more than 400 women and children annually. I visited their facilities last week and took some pictures and measurements of their windows for the curtains.
THE DETAILS ON CURTAINS
The Dorcas House needs curtains to cover 2 windows in their library (preferably matching), 2 windows in ladies’ rooms, and 2 windows in boys’ rooms (age 9+). They don’t want them to be see-through, so if we use lightweight fabric, I'm thinking we should probably line them with muslin to make them heavier and less see-through. (Any thoughts on this? I'm just guessing here and I'm open to suggestions.)
The basic measurement of all the windows is 40”x63”. I’ve never made full curtains, but from what I gathered online, curtains should be between 1½ to 3 times the width of your window for the best coverage. So I’m thinking we should make 2 panels roughly 40” wide for each window. That way, we could use about 2 yards of standard 45" fabric (plus 2 yards of muslin if we lined them) for each panel. Here is a picture of one of the windows so you can see what they look like. They are all inset like this one.
I have 6 yards of fabric I can bring that would make good panels for either the library or ladies' rooms. If I can find the same fabric, I'll pick up 2 more yards so we can have enough for matching curtains in the library. I have enough muslin to make a couple of panels, so I will bring that too. If any of you have fabric that you can donate that would be suitable for the other curtains, please leave a comment so that everyone will know who’s bringing what.
THE DETAILS ON BLANKETS
This is where we can be more creative. The Dorcas House has 75 beds and they always need twin sized blankets. As you can imagine, some of the blankets get removed when people leave the facility and some are soiled or torn and have to be thrown out, so they can use as many blankets as we can give them.
I’m envisioning fleece ones like these:
These particular blankets measure 66”x90” but since most fleece comes in 60” width, I’m wondering if it would be okay to make them 60”x90”? Does anyone have a twin bed so they can measure and let us know if that would work? If we made them 60” wide, we could use 2.5 yards of fleece for each and either hem it or bind it (or serge it? I don’t have a serger so I don’t know if that’s a good solution or not.).
I don’t want to narrow it down to just fleece, either. Flannel or some other material might be just as good (and less expensive). Any thoughts on this? I can tell you Hancock Fabrics is having a sale this Saturday and their Glacier Fleece Prints are 60% off, which would help quite a bit on the cost.
WHAT I NEED FROM YOU
I need to have a rough idea of how many people are coming to the sewing circle on July 11, how many are bringing sewing machines, and how many are bringing fabric, so that I can make sure we have enough material there for everyone to get to work on something. I will be bringing a large cutting mat and rotary cutter and my iron and ironing board in addition to my sewing machine.
Please leave a comment on this blog entry (or e-mail me) to let me know if you will be coming and if you have fabric to donate.
My plan is to give a definite end date for each project so that anyone working on items at home will know the deadline. But since this is our first project and I'm not sure what to expect, I'm not going to put an end date on this project yet. We'll see how it goes on the 11th and then I'll go from there.
As always, if you have thoughts, questions, or suggestions for better ways to make these items, please leave a comment so we can learn from each other's experience.
4 comments:
From Mae:
I have quite a few bolts of drapery fabric with various amounts left on them. Drapery fabric is 54” in width, so 1 ½ widths for each panel would be good.
Fleece does not fray on the edges so only the top and bottom would need to be finished with a hem or border to make them look more like a blanket.
Twin beds are 39” wide, 78” long.
I will be bringing a sewing machine.
From Teresa:
Maddie and I will be coming on the 11th and we both have sewing machines.
It might be too late for this, but if you plan to use muslin for lining, it should be washed and dried to pre-shrink it before being sewn to the fabric. Same for any fabric that is 50% or higher cotton content. Don't know how picky you want to be, though--it just makes for a nicer finished product that won't bunch up when washed.
I will bring my sewing machine.
Thanks for the info, Laura! Actually Mae has some drapery fabric that we can use, so we won't need the muslin. I didn't even know there was such a thing as drapery fabric, so I've already learned something. :) See you this afternoon!
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