Making Curtain Designs With Multiple Fabrics

Visit fabric shops and take a look at what's available. Touch the fabrics and hold them up to the light, Interior-Design-It-Yourself.com suggests looking at colors and fabrics you wouldn't usually associate with curtains, such as gauze, bright dress prints and cut-work velvets. Ask for small samples if they're willing to part with a couple of inches of fabric, and look through their scrap baskets.

Browse through a haberdashery store, looking at beads, braids, buttons, ribbons and studs. Think about feathers and gold thread, and dig about in their stock of blank tapestry canvas and embroidery threads.

Buy yourself a box of paints, a paintbrush and a pad of paper. Then sit down and play with ideas. Take inspiration from the fabrics, accessories and ideas you've had while looking around, and take your paintbrush for a visual brainstorm through page after page of ideas, developing some, abandoning others and working toward what feel like exciting designs. It doesn't matter how off-the-wall your ideas are – if you can imagine it, then there's probably a way of doing it.

Think about new ways of presenting window coverings – a tall, movable screen of color and texture, for example, or a set of three or four rods that each have two or three wild, fantastic, floor-length banners of color to be pulled on and off stage like actors in a play.

Start pulling your creations together, and sew up sample pieces. Imagine them full size. Experiment with shades of gray gauze and velvet, for example. Mix large squares sewn together with glass beads that wink in the light, silver chains and tiny pearl buttons. Consider rich reds in panels of silk and gauze sewn to or threaded through a canvas or a patchwork that moves through all the colors of the rainbow. Look through the work of fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood or the late Alexander McQueen to see their fusion of styles, textures, fabrics and color.

Use a sunny window to enrich your designs. Incorporate large colored plastic shapes, using a hot needle held in a cork to melt holes that can be threaded and sewn onto the backing -- a mosaic against the window glass, shining color through a delicate combination of gauze, silk and glass beads to transform the light in the room.