Curtains and Window Treatments
Fishburn
1982
This book was just dirty. And not in a good way. Seriously, just take a nice wipe to the cover. Since COVID, I am overly concerned about visible crud on books.
This reminds me of “Laura Ashley meets shabby chic” for the 1980s. Having attempted budget decorating in the 1980s, this really was reflective of the latest in home fashion, and would have been a decent choice for a home decorating collection. Those balloon-type shades in the third picture below seemed to be in every house back in the day. I tried to copy some homemade versions and ended throwing in the proverbial towel since it just didn’t look straight. I blame cheap fabric and my less than stellar sewing skills.
Just don’t forget the things that age due to trends and taste. I know that many of these types of materials are not a priority, but make sure you work them into the routine. Certainly, in thirty years or so, someone should have checked on this book.
Mary
The cover picture – that hideous shade of green! Aagh! Did a mold infestation take over?
The rest of the pictures: So that’s what the inside of a wedding cake looks like.
Those rooms where everything is the same pattern would have given me nightmares. Seriously. When I was little, I saw an “Omnibus” episode on TV, in which a man was imprisoned in one room and all he had to occupy himself with was chess, on a checkered bedspread. (Maybe he made the chess pieces from bread or something?) Anyway, he stared at the checkered fabric so much that everything he looked at also had the checkered pattern on it. It frightened me silly!
…That’s what those rooms remind me of. Also of being smothered.
i was a teenager and worked in a fabric store in the 80s. all the women were buying calico and making these things. to this day I hate fussy curtains window treatments. it looks like your windows died and covered in a shroud.
Reminds me of a motel I stayed at that had been decorated in this era. It had these window treatments, although at least they weren’t pink.
I flopped down on the bed, looked up at the ruffle above it (no 4 poster frame; just affixed to the wall, looked like the valance in the middle picture) and said to my friend, “It’s Laura Ashley on LSD”.
I never did this sort of thing b/c I can’t sew. More importantly, my husband and I both have terrible hay fever, and the thought of how much dust those yards of frilly, poofy fabric would accumulate put me off buying any ready-made.
The difficulty to clean these certainly makes me think they are impractical.
Wouldn’t you just take them down and throw them in the washer? I would, of course, have made sure they were made of no-iron stuff… seeing as I have not ironed anything since 1985.
I suppose, but then again, you could also not have them at all!
This reminds me of “Good Taste and Bad Taste in Couches” that did a cycle on the meme-go-round a few years ago. These all are “certainly not worth having” and “will cheapen the appearance of any room”.
Although I don’t care for the flower pattern, I rather covet that very sunny room with curtains around the bed to make a cozy den. Especially during the time of COVID when it is hard to get any privacy in my house.
Warm sun in a bright but not blinding room _is_ nice. Lack of it makes the last pic shown unremittingly bleak; it’s like a private insane asylum room from a Dickens story or something.
Look in the room with the four-poster bed–the curtains and the bed coverings and the wall paper all match! They match exactly or almost exactly. Where would someone find wallpaper and fabric that was so close? Or was someone really dedicated to searching for exact matches?
I guess I’m the outlier here. While I wouldn’t have curtains made with materials with patterns (I’d prefer one solid color with maybe a nice lace trim) I would buy curtains sewn like these.
And as someone who grew up around curtains like these you can throw them in the washing machine or have them steam cleaned. They and a nice roll down shade were much easier to keep clean than blinds.