Hyundai i800 Camper Cab Screen - NOT - The Great British Sewing Bee. FULL LENGTH VIDEO

And so it is done. ( The Curtains Saga That is. ) 

However, I’m unlikely to win the Great British Sewing Bee, or any other sewing competition for the finish.

I'm pleased with the final look of my Hyundai i800 Cabin Privacy Screen / Curtain. It has taken an age to make. 

The full width privacy curtain between the “cab” and the “van” was the last problem to be resolved. 

Again, my first thought was to keep things as simple as possible as dictated by the location. I planned on using a straight, horizontal, curtain track to span the entire width of the van behind the seats. This would have resulted in there being a gap between the top of the rail and the underside of the head lining. It was a compromise. Head room is limited and the plan would reduce this but would result in a simple straight curtain and be easier to fit.

The un-curtained void above the rail could be then be filled with a fixed valance. I set about making a template for this valance and the curtain track, but bumping my head on this template made me see that simple as it seemed on paper, it was not going to work.

It took a while to find a curtain rail section that would work but highly recommend the one I did finally discover. The rail needed to be small enough to be unobtrusive and light enough to be easily deformed to match the curved shapes of the head lining.

Making a black-out curtain with a lining on the reverse to match the colour of the other curtains was something new to me. The two material I had to hand were quite different from one another with differing sewable characteristics.

Added to this was the complex shape of the supporting curtain rail which needed to be matched in the top curtain hem if it was to hang neatly when closed across the gap.

The end result of almost three days work on both the rail and the curtain do seem to have been worth the effort. 

Given the shape of the space to be closed off, I now can’t imagine doing it any other way.

The video attached to this blog page describes both the problem and the solution much better that words, my sketch drawings or words ever can.

The curtain saga is therefore at an end for now though a few things like tie-backs and some telco pads to hold it against the inner sides of the van still need to be finished.

I can move on to the more exciting stuff like how to fit a flexible sleeping, storage and living solution.

Next up. “Why two beds?”