Adventures in insect screening

Ha! Well, I've done one window, and I'm already using the screen every day, as that particular room needs a lot of ventilation, for reasons I won't go into here :)

The first step was sticking the velcro onto the window frame, around the area I wanted screened - that was horrendously easy, no measuring required, so I was a happy bunny about that.

The next step was to figure out where to cut the material, which was basically about measuring what I'd stuck onto the window, lol. Transferring those measurements to the roll of screening material was much more difficult for me - as with cutting anything to fit, you need to take care, and you need to make sure you're cutting in straight lines. Dreadfully obvious, I know, and I knew it before I started, but I *have* still ended up with quite a lot of wobbly lines. Happily, the excess that I factored in has taken care of this. It will also take care of the fraying, which is considerable - I haven't yet hemmed it, so I'll have to update again about how that goes, but its obvious that its essential.

To be fair, the screening was really easy to cut, and I used a normal pair of scissors - if you can cut material, you can cut this. To get the velcro stuck onto the screening at the right place, I did one side, and worked from there, no measuring at all, just judging by eye where it needed to go, and it really does the job.

So, whats the result? I do need to take pictures still, but realistically, it works AND it doesn't look great, and these are the recommendations I'd make:
- the velcro you use *must* be the same colour as the windowframe its stuck to, so it can disappear as much as possible.
- the insect screening has to be hemmed, bits of material and fraying edges are not attractive.
- even better if the whole thing is behind something else, curtains, blinds, voile or whatever.
- you need lots of velcro! I only bought two metres, because I was experimenting, but obviously you need enough to go round the whole perimeter of the area you want to screen.

One final interesting point, for me was about what velcro you can buy - different colours and different widths, sure, but also you can buy the smooth bit and the hooked bit separately: so my aim now would be to buy one half sticky, to stick onto the window frame, and the other half the non sticky stuff, that can be sewn onto materials. Because thats what the screening is, its not magical, its just very stiff material. Happily for me!