Cortinas Portuguesas-Portuguese Curtains

I left my heart in Portugal, along with many friends. So whenever I get a chance, I go back. Although there are many places I've yet to visit, Portugal is and will remain one of my favorites. If you've been, you know why. If not, you should go. In my next post, I'll post some pictures in order to convince you, but for now, I'll get back to the craft at hand.

On my recent trip to Lisbon, I found some lovely dishtowels and a table cloth. This, for me, is the perfect souvenir because it's something I use daily, and reminds me of the place I love. So I grabbed them, and while I was choosing them I had a thought....... I could make the dish towels into kitchen curtains! I'd been looking for some cute fabric  to make curtains with, but hadn't found any, so this was perfect. the fabric, it even has a name "Lovers". It has a kind of Portuguese Fado written by a woman whose love has gone away to Brasil. It's very sweet.

Here's a similar dishcloth, since I forgot to take a pic before I started!

Anyway, I found a crochet edging that I liked and modified it a little. You can find the edging here and my mods on my ravelry project page.

 After fighting with my sewing machine, I opted for hand sewing the loops and then embroidered the top with the same yellow cotton I used to crochet the edging. You can find the stitch here. By the way, this last site is the best I've found for embroidery techniques and stitches. Sarah has great photo tutorials that make embroidery easy, even for novices.

Here's the FO! Hope you like them, I am really pleased with how they turned out! It just goes to show the difference a little handwork and love can make :)