The Serial Mom Shower Curtain

Waverly Ivy!  It was the pattern wallpaper in Serial Mom's kitchen!  You know Serial Mom.  She killed people for violating rules and standards.

And now, the fabric version of Waverly Ivy is going to be part of a new shower curtain I'm making.  The fabric clearly says, "Dry Clean Only."  And I'm putting it in a shower curtain! 

Thanksgiving is coming, and so are visitors. The situation creates a need for spiffing things up around here, including replacing a certain tattered, faded shower curtain.

Shopping for fabric for a new one, in the first fabric store I visited, I found one type and color I could live with.  But the store did not have the six yards I needed.

I looked online for fabric.  It was horrendously expensive.

I looked online for ready-made shower curtains.  Nothing I liked.

This was taking too much time.  I didn't want to take half a morning going to yet another fabric store and coming up empty.

So I decided to piece a new shower curtain together with fabric from my stash.  It took even more time than visiting another fabric store would have:  Never mind half a morning, it took me most of an afternoon and into the evening.

By careful measuring, I cut eight not-exactly-matching pieces and cobbled them together into a single piece, 72 inches high and 142 inches wide.

So what if they don't all match?  They're close enough.  And this fabric has been sitting around in my stash for 100 years anyway, so it might as well get used.

I really like the Waverly Ivy, so I  bought a few yards at discount upon the closing of my favorite fabric store, the late lamented Fabric Place of Cromwell, Connecticut.  I had the most yardage of that one kind, so most of the shower curtain consists of that.

I think John Waters must have liked Waverly Ivy too, in his film Serial Mom, or at least thought it typical of suburbia.  Do you know the film?  In it, Kathleen Turner plays a woman who kills people for violating rules like not wearing white after Labor Day.  Patty Hearst gets it for that infraction.  Yes, that Patty Hearst, acting in the John Waters film.  Serial Mom bludgeons her with a telephone for wearing those shoes.

And Serial Mom had Waverly Ivy for her kitchen wallpaper!  Yes she did!  Why do I remember that?  Because it was Waverly Ivy!

But here's the thing.  Serial Mom killed people when they failed to obey rules and standards.  I just want to say that this Waverly Ivy fabric came with a plain warning written in the selvage:  "This fabric has been treated with Scotchgard.  Dry clean only."

But I'm using it for a SHOWER CURTAIN!  It's gonna get wet and it's gonna get washed! It's not gonna get dry cleaned!

Do you think she'll bludgeon me with a sewing machine?