Riiiight. Well, my window _fan_ needed a costume. Since I'm in a mild
winter area (coastal So. Cal), I decided to leave the box fan in the
bathroom window this year. It's not as crazy as it sounds. I really
only need it covered during the coldest couple of weeks. Since
costumers regularly sew on some pretty weird stuff, I thought you'd
all appreciate the misery of dealing with the materials of choice.
Having had good luck and excellent insulation covering the garage
window (single pane) with a framework and staple-gunned silver bubble
film (think those cheap car window foldup shades), I decided to take a
similar approach to the box fan.
The fan is mounted in a piece of painted plywood in a double-hung
window. I'm not going to change this any time soon, as the house is
historic. The entire "box" of the fan projects inward. The proposed
design: cut the shape of the box, and cut 4" strips to go around it.
It's like making a pillow, only without the second flat side. Or maybe
a pillbox hat. Material is stiff! Assembly was a royal pain, since the
stuff is so stiff that if it runs into anything on the table, it stops
the feed dogs from helping it advance and the needle ends up doing
jumping jacks in place. I had to guide the insulating film through the
machine to avoid letting it stop, but not so fast that I jammed it and
broke a needle.
This was a 3- needle job. The third managed NOT to break :) Once the
basic pillbox shape was made, I then stitched a length of single fold
bias tape to the inside and topstitched the other side. This is a
place for a future drawstring. Beautiful it ain't <sigh>.
Test placement over the fan was perfect. I know it will keep out
drafts WAY better than the bath towel that it replaced. The look is
more high-tech than I'd prefer, since I'm an old-fashioned kinda
decorator, but WORKS is good.
Hooray for *draftless* showers!! :)
== Marjorie Wilser
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