Helen Kelley | loose threads

    A Paneless
    Experience

We decided to treat our aging house to new windows. Bill chose four quality windows manufactured to our specifications by a reputable company.

We hoped to get the front windows in first and follow up later with the rest of the house. Bill chipped and pried and sanded off 40 years of paint so that he could remove the old sashes and prepare the openings for our beautiful new units. We were excited when the double-paned windows arrived on a big truck and unpacked them right away.

Of four windows, one was not square. Another had been gouged during shipping. One had a small projection on the edge that prevented it from sliding up and down the channel inside the window frame. The fourth had a piece of insulation sticking up right dead center in the top of the lower sash. Four out of four windows all had to go back. That's a pretty good record!

Now where we used to have front windows, we have openings in the walls filled in with Styrofoam and newspapers.

Yesterday I thought I might improve the situation by buying new curtains. I made a trip to the mall for plain, opaque café curtains with swag tops. I found just what I was looking for in a neutral beige. Perfect. I bought four sets.

Helen Kelley is a quiltmaker, lecturer, author, and teacher from Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can visit Helen on the Internet at her website www.helenkelley- patchworks.com or email Helen at this address: helen@helenkelley- patchworks.com.

View our archive of Loose Threads columns.

Instead of swag tops, she had given me straight valances. All of the curtains would have to go back to the store. Again, a pretty impressive record.

When I tried to return the panels, the clerk asked, "Why can't you use the 36" panels? You could make them fit." I was reminded of the times when people have shown me old star quilt tops that were all pointy in the center like circus tents. The person showing me the top would usually remark, "Oh, it'll quilt down." Well, no, it won't. Not really. Not if you want the quilt to lie flat and smooth and make you proud. Those 36" curtains that would be too big for my windows certainly won't "quilt down" either.

Any quilter knows that if she is going to piece a patchwork block together, the seam allowances have to be a neat, accurate 1/4". If they are not, the parts won't go together properly, and the block will buckle and the edges will bow.

I have a few lumpy old quilt tops stored in my basement from someone who said, "Oh, I don't have to be particular. I'll just make it do. It'll all work out." There's a Grandmother's Flower Garden top that has pleats in the hexagons to make them fit together. That quilt looks like a bowl of popcorn. There's an appliqued Princess Feather top in which the background fabric flares out around the red and green plumes like ruffles. Those parts did not fit together. They were the wrong sizes. True quilters know that to make something look well made, it's gotta fit!

When that saleslady suggested that those curtains could be made to fit, she was talking to the wrong person.

Now we have four holes in the front of our house that will be without windows for six weeks. I cannot even mask the Styrofoam and cardboard because the curtains didn't fit. Years ago one of the batting companies offered a set of Pennsylvania hex designs to applique. Perhaps I should have made a hex quilt to ward off jinxes before we started this project. I could have hung it in the living room and averted some of this disaster.

©HK 2006