I had great success with some new curtains I bought for my front room, so I thought I would go the easy route and purchase curtains for the family room as well. I have 2 sliding glass doors and 2 large windows in the room so I needed a bunch of curtains.

I found some curtains that coordinated with my current wall colors and I thought I had success. I needed 8 packages of curtains to cover all the windows. No problem.

I hit a couple of stores and pick up all that I need and bring them all home and hang them up. Guess what. They are different dye lots. Very different. Some had a red cast and some had a blue. Back to the store to pick up more packages to bring home and compare. 4 stores later, I have enough curtain panels that basically match.

Unfortunately I decided to wash the curtains before I hung them. One of the doors leads to the studio and I knew it would eventually need to be washed. I followed the washing instructions. Really. Who would have thought they would shrink 8 inches. Unfortunately, that now makes the curtains 6 inches shorter than the sliding glass doors. That is not going to work.

I decided that the solution is to buy a coordinating fabric to add a contrasting border. I made several trips to JoAnn’s to find some fabric, but it seems that I have picked a color that few manufacturers are coordinating with. After bringing several fabrics home and not having them work with everything else in the room I decide to take Bill with me.

Bill and I headed off to the BIG JoAnn’s with a 50% off coupon. An hour or so later we walk away with border fabric.  Yeah!