ANNE SHIRLEY WOULD HAVE LOVED MY DRAPES

 

Who has had Miss Sandy's curtains??   You know---those heavy Laura Ashley/Rachel Ashwell chintzy-folds and loops with corner swags like Princess Diana's Weddin' sleeves?   Surely somebody knows someone, or has viewed a prospective house that gave you an itch to grab down those great dollops of fabric and go SHEER for life.

I confess to a thoughtless moment of that loopy frenzy, in the last-house-before-we-bought-this-one:   It was a tall-front-steps leading in to MORE tall steps up to kitchen and bedrooms, with a small mezzanine effect between floors, carpeted and with double windows looking out front, like where a visiting suitor might sit with his hat on his knees til he was announced.      The carpet was a pale baby blue in that 8x10, perfectly sized for a Goodwill sofa we'd acquired, and since I had a bolt of baby-blue polished cotton stashed somewhere---that's all it took.    There were Sandra Lee kits all over K-Mart and WalMart, with all the snazzy do-hickeys to bend cloth to your will, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, everybody was gone to the movies, and I had the neatest little stepladder . . .  

I have mentioned quite a few times my absolute ignorance with anything that requires thread.   My childhood attempts at a Sampler would get you laughed off Antiques Roadshow, and any crochet effort became a Barbie hat in nothing flat.    And I didn't CUT the stuff, just rolled the bolt out on the floor til it looked like enough.     The curtain rod was a medium-heavy one, just round enough for a few good swags, with a long floor-length pulled to one side to get the proper "puddling," and surplus enough on the top corner for stuffing in a few dozen fluff-squeezed plastic grocery bags.   No rhyme or reason, no measuring---I just poofed them out to Anne Shirley's Dream of Glory.   They were big blue melony mounds on one end, and it took me quite a time to duplicate that over-blown swag on the other, but I got some semblance of it.    

Getting the "puddle" right on the other end, a big Rosewood vase of Chris' canes on the outer end, and we had a proper sitting room to befit a very unimportant manor somewhere.  It was indeed the mimic of Carol Burnett's Po'Teer dress, in a more modest color.    I smiled every time I went up and down those stairs, and sometimes would just stand in the kitchen and LOOK.   It was stylish at the moment, and I had sculpted CLOTH in to something recognizable, if not prim.   And it was the only place in the house that never had books or magazines or Coke cans or shrugged off sweaters lying about.   And that little bit of Serenity was worth it all. 

I took the whole thing down when we moved to this house, and used the yards and yards to wrap glassware, and have no idea where that great length of blue cotton went to.    I DO, however, have a decades-old little bolt in the front coat closet---happy little teapots on a pinkish sateen.    I just KNOW it will make a perfect cover for the cushions on the park bench in the up Sitting room, come Spring.   Better late than never, and I have some new rolls of duct tape.