My daughter is a Pre-K teacher. All I can say is, she has more patience than I have ever had….I love my children and my grandchildren, totally. But day in and day out with someone elses children…..whoa ~ stop the school bus and let me off.
Last year she asked me to help her get her classroom organized. Who knew all the STUFF Pre-K teachers need just-to-have-class.
The previous teacher had not been…hummm…..how can I say this…she had not been tidy. I’ll just leave it at that. And she had left in a hurry and left all her stuff behind. And so, having compassion on my daughter, who was undergoing great troubles in own her life, I offered to help.
Drawing on every ounce of organizational skills I had, we gathering boxes and baskets, labels and Sharpies together and in short order we organized the mess. Mission accomplished.
I looked around the room to see if there was anything else I could do to make this a pleasant experience for the little ones who would be leaving home, possibly for the first time ~ ever!
The classroom curtains left a lot to be desired. I decided not only would new curtains make the little ones happy, but it would make my daughter happy, too.
We began our search for fabric to make simple tab topped curtains. Finally, I found some I thought looked like Kindergarten! Big and bold and colorful, flowers and dots and I bought it.
I made simple cafe curtains and used a contrasting color to make the tabs across the top. I made a border across the bottom hem of the same fabric I used for the tabs.
These are so simple to make. If you don’t know how to sew, you can use fusable web tape to hem the edges. Hotglue or fabric glue is another option to make them.
I used fusable tape on the hem and sides. In this case, I did sew across the tab tops because my fabric was rather heavy. I used tension rods to hang them.
Measure the size you want for your curtain. How wide and how tall. Measure extra for a hem all the way around plus extra to fold over at the top and bottom hem…normally about 1″ inch on each side and 4″ for bottom and 6″ for top.
Another option for the tabs tops is to use satin or grosgrain ribbon. My tabs measured about 10 inches. Folded in half made them 5″ tabs. You could make sashes with the ribbon and tie them in bows on the curtain rod. If you choose to do that, allow for the extra ribbon length needed to tie bows. The fabric and ribbon combinations are endless.
I had intended to hotglue buttons to the tab bottoms to make them look like they were buttoned…I opted not to because the pattern was so busy, they would be lost. But that might be just the touch yours need.
…….I love the way the sun shines through brightening the curtains even more.
What a HAPPY little Classroom!
I can’t believe it has been a whole year and Summer is almost over….school is about to start back again. A whole new crop of Pre-schoolers will once again be greated with these cheerful little curtains. It’s not much, but I hope it lets them know somebody loves them and that school is a pretty cool place to be.
