a peak inside

most everyone who visits me has said the same thing: "what's with the paper hanging in your door?" well, we'll get to that in a sec.

here's the back story:

august 2009. summer. it was my first night staying here, and although it was under-construction, i was excited to finally sleep at my own place. i locked my bike to the fence right outside my door, ready to bike to work the next day. but as i opened my door on that raining morning, the bike was gone, and in it's place, the broken lock lay in two pieces on the ground.

i felt a little uneasy, someone had been footsteps from my door. maybe they tried the door handle -- just for fun -- to see if it was left unlocked. my mind was filled with imagery of what had happened the night before. even if it had been a somewhat innocent crime of uptown late-night carousing by excited bar-goers after last call, i couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been peeping through my windows, looking to see if there was anything worth breaking and entering for.

so i ripped a piece of lined notebook paper in half and hastily secured it over my window opening in the door with masking tape. phew! now no one would be able to peak in whenever they felt.

i finally decided that little piece of paper needed to be replaced. i grabbed the leftover fabric rachael had given me along with her circle wall art frames (currently hanging my dining room) and picked out a pattern with tiny flowers. i made it four sheets thick -- so it's not completely opaque, but also not thin enough to be see-through.

i also decided that since the fabric was so thin, it would need to be weighted down at the bottom (so the wind from my fans wouldn't constantly blow it about).

my solution? i sewed a little tunnel (i apologize for not at all knowing the proper sewing terms) just large enough to hold a thin magic marker. but one wasn't heavy enough, so i added another "tunnel" for another marker to hide, to help weigh my fabric curtain down.

next i sewed two small one-sided pieces of velcro near the top of the fabric, on the backside of course. then cut equal lengths of velcro to stick to each, and secured each of those with a 3M command strip to attach to my door.

and voila! my new door window covering. definitely a step up from the lined notebook paper and masking tape...