Yes, finally I am done with the Tree Blind I started months & months ago for Chloe & Blake's room & finally I am back on this blog. Seems that lately its been taking me a long time to accomplish my creative endeavors. I have been sidetracked by summer, school starting again, the garden's and exercising. On my mornings where both of the little wonders are at school, normally I would have been spending my time on the blog, but I started out this year with making sure I do something in the realm of physical fitness, and its been paying off health wise for me, but has left me little time for being here.
So back to the Blind. I found this tutorial from the Two Straight Lines Blog, a lovely craft blog. One of my goals was to make something that would block out the early morning sun for the children, in the hopes of getting a little extra shut eye in the mornings, which is why I used the green canvas fabric. It does block out the sun nicely, but it does make it hard to capture nice clear images. These were the best I could do.
This was my first attempt at making a blind/curtain of any kind, so I did learned quite a bit from the process & outcome. Like anything you do (seams, using print fabric's) will show through when the sun is shining on it. The other function I wanted it to serve was the ability to roll it down but have the bottom 3/4 still covering the window, so there would be nice airflow through the room on hot nights, but no one could see the little people inside. I really like how that worked out.
As far as the tree shape and the leaves, it really took a long time to cut those out and iron them on, I used heat n bond lite on the leaves, and the ultra hold version on the tree to adhere them to the fabric. I did add some hand embroidery details to the sun in the corner, the flower, the butterfly and added grass on the bottom, all hard to see unless you are right up close to it. The bottom hangs a bit funky, possibly due to not measuring the back fabric and front fabric correctly. It also has one other function, it can be folded up to the top using the ribbon loops to secure it.
I am pretty happy with the blind, although when I look at it, the tree is a funky shape, and I don't know that owl's hang out during the daytime with the sun shining on them. Oh well, those were the things that I wanted to add to it, so who cares if it makes sense? The important thing is, the kids really like it in their room, they have been patiently waiting for me to hang it up. Now that I am done, I need to make another blind for the other window. I am going to use the same fabric front & back, but no extra applique's, just a simple blind this time. That way I might get it done much quicker !!
