Window Decor

Given the wealth of new books published every year on choosing and making window treatments--curtains, blinds, and so on--there's no reason to invest in Window Decor. For the trouble of stumbling through the book's haphazard layout and sloppy directions (was it even proofread?), readers will be rewarded with projects of curiously dated design. (Notes to Prolific Impressions, producers of the book: Might try being less prolific. Might also try hiring a copyeditor--one who can fix those places where, for example, picture numbers are referred to in the instructions but the pictures themselves aren't numbered. Making a curtain isn't rocket science, but neither is making a book.)

Lots of space in this slim volume is given over to instructions for making padded faux cornices from cornice kits (though these kits come with their own instructions, I imagine) and silly-looking painted plywood window inserts in the shapes of sitting cat, pot of geraniums, picket fence, chickens, that kind of thing--you'll either love them or loathe them. Templates for the painted designs, should you want to use them (the finished projects resemble high-school play stage sets), can be photocopied from the pages.

Thankfully, the quality of the projects is uneven. There are some classic treatments--full-length pleated velvet drapes, swag-and-poufs, gauzy layered curtains--with which you could hardly go wrong. And several of the more unusual ones--rough tree branches tied with leather lacing, pretty tea towels with large buttonholes for the curtain rod, sheer curtains printed with a dragonfly stamp--might inspire you to look beyond chintz, beyond chickens even, for your window treatments. --Liana Fredley