Panel curtains are easy, right?

David came over yesterday and will be here for dinner. Evan is coming over at 1:00.

I woke up with stomach cramps and decided to stay home while everyone else went to the coolest, happiest service of the year. The guys out there may want to skip to the next paragraph. I stopped having menstrual cramps after giving birth. I thought it was one of the up-sides. I've begun to get them again every now and then, and it turns out that is all that I have today. I just didn't recognize it!

Anyway, David wanted me to help him make curtains for his bedroom window in his new apartment and a duvet cover. I told him that things take longer than one expects, but that we could try.

"Well, I have sheets for the duvet cover, so that will be easy. And I just want to make panel curtains. That's easy too, right?"

"Yeah. Come over early on Saturday and we will work."

So he showed up yesterday. He iron one flat sheet and then opened the other package to discover that it was a fitted sheet. So I drove him to the store so he could exchange it, except they were out of stock.

So we came back to work on the simple, no-trouble-at-all panel curtains.

He has two different fabrics. He wants a black stripe on the top and the bottom.

"Okay. That will mean doing double seams so that you don't have loose threads on the back of your curtain."

"Is that hard?"

"No, it will just take some time, but you just want to put a simple casing on the top?"

"Yeah. I just want to make it easy."

"Okay."

"Except that I don't want for it to get all crinkled on the top."

"Okay. We can make it only as wide as the window, and then it will lay flat."

"I don't want it to be flat in the middle. I just don't want it to be wrinkly on the top."

"Honey, the curtain will either have fullness in it or it won't."

"Can't we make them like your curtains in the dining room?"

"Tab curtains?"

"Yes. I like how those hang."

Jeeze Louise. Simple panel curtains my a$$. Next he tells me that he wants to put the tabs on the back, but he doesn't want them to hang funny; he knows we have to put just the right amount of looseness in them and he wants me to tell him how thick a curtain rod is! I point out that rods come in different widths. We need to know how big HIS is. We spent a couple of hours trying to put tabs on the back, and then he agreed to regular tabs.

We spent all day on them. I mean that. I went to bed at 11:00pm and he was still sewing. He did a good job though. I sat and worked on sudoku puzzles and gave him instructions. He has done every bit of the cutting and sewing, and the curtains look pretty good. Today he just as to sew around the outside.

It was nice though to have a project to do with him, and I am looking forward to Evan coming home this afternoon.

It is lovely to see them growing up and managing so well.