The curtain hack that's keeping me toasty

It was a bad time for my sewing machine to pack it in: I needed to add linings to eight sets of curtains.

That's 16 individual curtains and about 32 metres of hand-sewing. Luckily, I’m post-Covid right now, not interested in going out at night, and I have a backlog of series to watch on Netflix.

I’d been set this task by Richard Popenhagen, eco design advisor for Nelson City Council, as he was advising me on how I could heat up my 1945-built, single-glazed home without spending a fortune.

His heat pump advice was well-received, and in my case was quickly resolved. I angled my vanes down and made sure the setting was on heat, at 20C, with the fan on automatic.

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The curtains were going to take a bit longer.

But if I upgrade them correctly (three layers, to the floor, with a fluffy inner "bumpf" lining), they are as good for heat retention as double-glazed windows with aluminium framing, Popenhagen says.

He says curtains should not only reach to the floor, but they should preferably "puddle" on the ground.

Thermal fabric is a misnomer, he further adds. It would be like going outside in winter in one thin layer of clothing. Think how much warmer you’d be with three layers.

The curtains in my dining room are "a perfect example of a curtain that will do practically nothing for you," he says. They’re a single-layered, thermal fabric that extends only to the window sill.

My first stop is Spotlight where I find that polar fleece fabric – the suggesting inner lining – costs $12 a metre and is only 140cm wide.

I would need at least 2.4m per curtain which comes to $28.80, for a grand total of $460.80. I’m sure many people would not baulk at that, but I don't fancy paying that much for a product that is basically plastic.

My rates have just gone up by $525.67 a year. Mushrooms are $18 a kilo. Let's accept here and now that I’m not going to spend nearly $500 on curtain linings.

At Kmart, I find a Coral Jacquard blanket in ivory for $22. It's 220cm by 240cm, so better value than buying polar fleece unhemmed. The 2.4m length is actually pretty perfect to make a floor-length curtain. I buy two.

The next week, I find a similar product at The Warehouse for $10 a blanket. That's more like it.

And so, it's with a glad heart that I get out my embroidery needle and thread and set to my evening's work. It turns out that hand-sewing is meditative.

I feel like I’m wearing a track in the concrete floor of my local Warehouse, as I trek once again past the women's clothing and craft supplies to homewares, and the shelves of $10 polar fleece blankets.

I don't know why I didn't just load up a trolley with 14 the first time, but it seems like part of the slow-sew process.

I also make several trips to op shops to buy an inner "lining" for the curtains – another set of plain-coloured curtains to hook into the back of the existing one (mercifully, no more sewing). These are very cheap, although variously so, somewhere around $5 to $8 a curtain.

Eventually every window in my house is covered. The triple curtains are bulky and snuggly, and I love closing them each evening as the sun disappears.

It's such a good feeling, and we’re warmer, I’m sure. But I have realised a problem remains: I can't keep the curtains shut all day.

This is where double glazing would come into its own. As soon as I have $40,000 that's not needed elsewhere, I’m ringing the glass people.