Alma's Handmade Fall Curtains
Alma's Handmade Fall Curtains
Thirty Falls, Stitched in Marietta, Ohio
Alma Tolliver, 72. Her grandmother taught her at the kitchen table, and she has worked at her mother's 1968 machine ever since. For fifty-one years she stitched altar cloths, christening blankets and wedding linens for churches and families across the county — and every August, for herself, she started the pumpkins. This is her last harvest run. The barn comes down in the next few weeks.
"A woman at a church bazaar told me the only fall decorating she owned came out of a box and went back in a box. She wanted one thing in the house that looked like somebody had made it. I stitched her a row of pumpkins, she hung it over her sink that night, and she called the next morning and said, 'I've had eleven falls in this house and this is the first one that came inside.' I never sold a single one after that. I gave them away. These are the last."
— Alma Tolliver, Marietta, Ohio
What You Receive
Everything That Ships With Your Curtain
Your Harvest Curtain
55″ × 24″. Sheer voile or oatmeal linen ground, raised stitching, finished hem. Ready to hang.
Four Harvest Designs
Pumpkin Patch, Garden Carrots, Goldenrod Field and Pumpkin Patch Linen Version — the four she stitched every fall.
Alma's Card
A short handwritten note from Alma with every order, and how she folds them away for the winter, in her own words.
90-Day Returns
Hang it. Live with it. If it isn't right, send it back within 90 days for a full refund.
Why This Curtain
Six Things You Won't Find on a Printed Fall Curtain
Every detail below comes out of fifty-one years of doing the same difficult thing well: working thread into cloth you can see through, without puckering it — and thirty falls of getting the pumpkins right.
Handwork, Not Print
Every pumpkin, gourd, vine and stem is laid into the cloth by hand and stands proud of the surface. Run your thumb across and you feel each one. Almost every orange fall curtain on a shelf this season is ink lying on fabric — put it away for eleven months and it comes out chalky at the folds. There is nothing sitting on top of this cloth. The pumpkins are the cloth.
Cover at the Sink, Without the Dark
A plain sheer hangs there and hides nothing. A heavy curtain hides everything, including your window. The stitching sits between the two: the pattern breaks up the line of sight, so a neighbour across the drive sees pumpkins and movement instead of you at the sink — while the cloth around it stays thin enough to keep the room bright on a grey October morning, which is when it matters.
Takes The Heat And Glare Off The Room
September is still hot through most of the country, and the sun drops lower every week — so it comes in hard and straight across the counter at the hour you are standing there. The voile scatters that light instead of letting it fall through in a slab: the glare comes off the worktop and the sting comes out of the room, with the blind still up. And because the cloth is denser wherever the thread lies, the pattern shades more than the ground around it. What you get around nine in the morning is a row of pumpkins in soft shadow, moving as the sun climbs.
Cut for the Window Over the Sink — 55″ × 24″
Store fall curtains come 63 or 84 inches long, worked out for a living-room window that runs nearly to the floor. Over a sink they cover the glass you wanted to look through, and the bottom sits in the basin. This one runs across the glass and stops well above the sill. Nothing hangs in the sink, and the whole top of the window stays open — which matters in October, when the daylight is already short.
Up in a Minute, on a Tension Rod
All four have a rod pocket wide enough for a plain tension rod. No brackets, no screws, no drilling into a tiled backsplash, nothing your landlord has to be asked about. Alma has hung one in about ninety seconds while the kettle boiled — and it comes down just as fast on the first of December.
Washes, Folds Flat, Comes Back Next Year
It's a kitchen in soup season, so it will get greasy. Take it down, warm gentle wash, hang it damp, and it drops flat by the next day — no ironing. Then it folds into a drawer for the winter instead of cracking in a plastic tote in the attic, and it comes out next September looking the way it looked this one.
❧ Craft Note
"Seasonal textiles are where printing shows itself fastest. A printed motif is a pigment layer bonded to the surface — fold it, box it, store it warm for eleven months, and the pigment cracks along every crease. You see it as pale lines through the orange. Stitched work has no layer to fail: the colour is thread running through the ground, so it survives folding and storage indefinitely. On an open cloth like this the difficult part is tension — pull too tight and the ground draws in and the panel never hangs straight again. Done properly, a piece like this outlives the person who buys it."
Ellen Marsh — Textile Conservator · 28 years · Former Chair, Ohio Valley Needlework Guild
Where It Goes
Where The Season Actually Shows
There is only ever one size: 55 inches wide × 24 inches tall.
The mistake that sends more kitchen curtains back than anything else is measuring the glass and ordering that number. You want more width than window, not the same. Those 55 inches are meant to gather — one curtain dresses a window up to roughly 36 inches wide with a proper soft fold in it. Wider than that, order two and let them meet in the middle.
Not sure? Send us the width of your window and we'll tell you. We would far rather answer an email than post a parcel back.
Quality Promise
Five Things You Get With Every Panel
90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Hang it over your sink. Live with it through a few grey mornings and a few short afternoons. If it isn't right — the size, the light, the stitching, the design, anything — send it back within 90 days for a full refund. No questions, no forms. Just an email to our team.
❧ A Note From the Barn
Alma finishes every panel by hand and looks it over before it ships. Slight variations in the stitching and in where a pumpkin falls are a natural part of work done this way — no two panels come off the machine quite alike, and that is by design. The hems are turned by hand. The lace and trims are set one at a time. Voile arrives folded, so expect a few creases: hang it, and it drops flat within a day. None of this is a flaw. It is the maker's hand at work — fifty-one years of it.
The Details
Product Specifications
| Material | Fine polyester voile ground on Pumpkin Patch and Garden Carrots; oatmeal linen-look ground on Goldenrod Field and Pumpkin Patch Linen Version |
| Construction | Raised handwork laid into the cloth — no print anywhere on the panel. Scalloped, looped or ruffled hem depending on design, turned sides |
| Available Designs | Pumpkin Patch · Garden Carrots · Goldenrod Field · Pumpkin Patch Linen Version |
| Size | 55″ W × 24″ H (140 × 61 cm) |
| Window Width | One curtain dresses a window up to approx. 36″ wide with a soft gather. Wider windows: order two |
| Header | Wide rod pocket on all four designs — takes a standard tension rod. No brackets, no screws, no drilling |
| Light | Sheer to semi-sheer, light-filtering. Cover at the window while the room keeps its daylight; scatters the low, hard fall sun so the glare and the afternoon heat come off the room |
| Care | Machine washable — warm gentle cycle, hang damp, drops flat by the next day. No ironing. Folds flat for storage; no cracking at the folds |
| Use | Kitchen sink window · Dining room · Half-glass door · Camper & RV · Cabinet fronts · Fall gifting |
| Maker | Alma Tolliver — fifty-one years at one machine, thirty fall runs, Marietta, Ohio |
| Final Collection | About 388 panels remain — no reorders; the barn comes down in the next few weeks |
| Guarantee | 90-day full refund, no questions asked |