Dining Room Curtains (on the cheap!)

I've been wanting some curtains in a ba-a-a-a-ad way.

I measured and went to the fabric stores in search of the perfect thing.

The perfect thing is Expensive (with a capital "E").

I was already well educated in the Nester's ways of window mistreatments, which saves a lot of money but still requires fabric. And then I considered what I had previously dismissed (and probably even rolled my eyes at, truth be told).

But first, I give you the very first "before" picture when the previous owners still lived here:

And then it looked like this (which was no small thing if you remember this horrific painting adventure):

And here it is today:

Do you know how I made these curtains?

And what I made them with?

If you travel around blogland much then you may have seen this idea. These are "dropcloth curtains" - as in painters dropcloths! They are, what I like to call, "poor man's linen".

I bought one 6x9 dropcloth for $9.48 for each panel. I washed them with plenty of softener since they're so stiff at first. Of course then they had to be ironed too. While I had the iron out, I used some stitchwitch (less than $2 for 20 yards at Walmart) to make seams on the sides. (The top and bottom already had seams.) Supposedly, there are some dropcloths that are finished on all sides, but this is what Lowe's had.

I used ring clips to hang the cloths on the rods once all of the nonfun stuff was done. I folded and clipped and kind of puffed them up at the top, but I may change that later. I can't decide. My inspiration photo below would be another look to try.

Here was the main picture I used for inspiration (from The Lettered Cottage, I believe):

And here's a Pottery Barn picture. Those long panels cost around $90 each!

It's not cheap to buy such long curtains. But I think $9.48 a panel is pretty good! I'm even thinking of doing something similar, but with some pretty fabric sewn on the bottom portion for the front living room. We'll see.....

So there you have it - my version of dropcloth curtains. What do you think?
Do you have any creative curtain methods?