Skyline Curtains

We were commissioned by a new ‘client’ (my older brother and his wife) to give their curtains a sleek skyline look. But first, you should go take a tour of their classy high-end Chicago loft. Here’s a photo of their impressive great room. Amazing, right?

And would you believe that this is the view from their wall-o-windows in the living room? JEALOUS.

As a rule of thumb, we try not to experiment on our clients. And though we’re rookies at painting on fabric, we felt confident we could pull it off! (and we knew if we failed… they’d still have to love us!)

We started by hanging the curtains end-to-end in the garage. Using an overhead projector, we blasted the image below (actual Chicago skyline) onto the curtains… and traced it with a fabric pencil!

Then, after doing some research, and learning that fabric paint is NOT the way to go, we purchased your typical latex flat wall paint… and started slapping it on with a brush!

We wanted to keep it abstract and ‘artsy,’ so we allowed the brush strokes to show, making for a choppy modern look.

The trickiest part of this project was worrying about whether everything would line up or not. And hoping that each curtain would flow cohesively from one to another, without one curtain feeling ‘heavier’ than the another. Does that makes sense? No? That’s ok.

Due to space limitations (and because unlike their swanky loft, our ceilings are less than 12 feet tall) we spread them all over our house to dry, and spent a day tiptoeing around the edges. Imagine if we had spilled a plate of spaghetti on them! It definitely crossed our minds.

I’m not very good at tutorials, because I start talking about things that don’t apply (like spaghetti). And to be honest, I just like to get to the finished product. Patience has never been a forte of mine… speaking of Forte, did anyone see the tragic Bear’s game on Sunday? Goodbye Super Bowl.

OK OK! Here you go! A final photo of the curtains hung in the sexy Chicago loft!

And here’s what they look like when they’re open.

And for the record, I was skeptical and intimidated by this project… but the latex paint went on perfectly, wasn’t too ‘stiff,’ and ended up looking pretty decent if I do say so myself!

Do you have any horror/success stories from painting on fabric? What kind of paint did you use? And did it work out well for you?