When I had sewed the velcro on initially, it had helped to maintain the shape of the curtain and keep it from sagging inwards. When I removed those pieces, it sagged again and looked really silly, so I sewed a big X through the middle of each curtain.

I cut a tiny hole in the fabric, slipped one in, took the remainders of the magnets and used them to drag the magnet on the inside to the edges. I then sewed a little box around them, which gives them enough room to flip over if, say, I glued the wrong end of the magnet to the window.

I also bought 100 Neodymium rare earth magnets for around $5 on Amazon. These little guys are STRONG. In order to lessen the amount of light that peeped through where the curtain sagged while stuck to the window, I epoxied a bunch of the magnets to the inner plastic edge of the windows. Then I stuck the curtains up at their velcro points, took a white pencil and marked where the magnets were on the window directly on the curtain.

I found on Amazon some of the same kind of super heavy duty velcro that are given to people with their EZ Passes (for toll road transponders, for those of you who are not East Coasters). I figured since they could hold something on the windshield without melting off, that they could hold curtains on. And thankfully, they haven’t failed. Finally! The adhesive is strong enough that it can hold the fabric of the curtain as well as stick to the glass.

I tore out the velcro I had sewn to the curtains, which was a NIGHTMARE because the adhesive stuck way better to the fabric than the windows. For someone who was diagnosed with arthritis when she was 11, that kind of aggressive pulling and ripping made the bones in my hands sore for days.

After the heartbreaking Velcro-melting incident, I attempted to superglue them to the windows (LOL, yes I did that), which also ended up failing.

I have not…but I’m considering just supergluing the velcro back to the windows. It worked so well…when it worked.

In order to vandwell, you need some kind of light-blocker that doubles as insulation over the windows. This way, it (theoretically) keeps cool air in, hot air out (and vice versa in the winter), and also keeps people from being able to peer inside while you’re sleeping, protecting you and all of your valuables.





I’m currently involved in a hell of a struggle to figure out what’s the best way for me to install curtains of some sort inside of the van. There are a variety of reasons why this is a total nightmare. 1.) I have a minivan, and minivans weren’t really designed for hanging/installing things like this 2.) the windows in the van are recessed and have foam around the edges to keep water from getting in, and also are surrounded by flimsy plastics that are hard to install anything to. Also, the plastics are rounded and don’t provide any flat surfaces, which makes everything more difficult.





My first two rounds have been failures so far in different ways. I’m going to still post all of the pictures and steps that I took for each attempt, in case one of my failures may actually give someone else ideas that would ultimately work for them.





ROUND 1 - D-ring hangers





My first idea was to install these D-ring hangers that are for hanging pictures after watching another van dweller’s video on YouTube. He had installed them into the plastics over each seatbelt in the car (6 total) and then strung curtains in between each one.

Instead of using the screws, I used a pop riveter to install them into the plastics.

Pros: easy installation, quick fix, and even though this didn’t end up working, I now have a bunch of hangers that I can potentially hang other things from.

Cons: Since the windows are recessed, and the hangers are installed over the seatbelt spots, that means there’s about 3 inches of space in between the window and the curtain, which makes the interior of the van seem much smaller. Also, it didn’t work.

My original idea was to use fishing line to string curtains on. I figured I could pull it tight enough to hold the curtains up.

Unfortunately what ended up happening was the curtains were too heavy and pulled the line down, and when I tried to tighten the line, it pulled the hanger out.





In retrospect, this wasn’t the brightest idea; however, I think I’m going to try to revisit this idea when I tackle the curtain-behind-the-cockpit. I think with better installation hardware (the pop rivets I think weren’t long enough to grip the plastic and the hanger) and hanging material (maybe picture hanging wire next time) this could potentially work. I put this aside, though, and moved onto my next idea.





ROUND 2 - Velcro





I decided to attempt to use stick-on velcro, and attach one side to the windows, and sew the other side to my curtain solution. While the velcro didn’t end up working (you’ll see why eventually), the curtains that I made are pretty rad and I’m definitely going to make them work somehow.





Here’s what I did:





First, I went and bought supplies. A roll of velcro (~$12 USD), a marking pencil (~$2), a seamstress’ tape measure (~$2), some pins (which I already had), and a pair of scissors (which I already had).

I also bought about 2 and a half yards of a shiny silver fabric. I did this because I wanted to make one side of the curtain reflective. For the other side, I already had a few dark brown heavy cotton curtains that I wasn’t using, that I cut up into window-sized squares (but not exactly to fit, and you’ll see why later).





For my first order of business, I cut the velcro into 3 inch strips and attached the hook side to the window. The velcro that I bought said it could withstand 2000 uses. I put one in the top right corner, the top left, bottom right and bottom left, and then a small strip at the top center and another on the center right to make sure the curtain would cover the whole window and not let any light in.

Then I stuck the loop side to the top left of the curtain, leaving enough room around the edges for hemming. I pinned it on for good measure.

I attached the top left corner to the window and then pulled it to the top right corner and marked the curtain where I would need to attach the other piece of velcro to it.

I did the same for all of the pieces of velcro, marking the curtain where to attach them.

After pinning the pieces of velcro onto the curtain, I then attached it to the window and drew a line on it around the edge of the window to mark the shape of the window onto the curtain.

Then I went back inside. Because 96 degrees and humid is NOT a pleasant environment.

Here you can see where the edge of the window was marked on the curtain.

Using a 1 inch margin, I cut around the edge marking. This is to allow room for sewing the reflective fabric onto the back and hemming.

I unrolled the silver fabric, shiny side down, and pinned the crap out of the curtain to it to hold it in place.

*Try and bear with me here. I am an amateur seamstress as I only learned how to use a sewing machine a couple months ago, so this is all a learning process for me. It’s kind of janky, but it ended up working anyways!

I cut the silver fabric to match the edge of the curtain.

This is what the silver backside looked like.

Ultimately, the velcro strips were going to be attached to the silver side, since that’s the side facing the window, so I had to transfer them and pin them to the silver side before sewing. I used a pencil for the marks.

Now that the velcro was pinned to the silver side, it was time to flip the curtain inside out for sewing. First, I unpinned everything.

Then I pulled back the brown layer (like opening a book) and laid it down next to the silver layer, so that both inside sides were facing up at me.

Then I picked up both sides by the ends that touched…

…and then laid them flat, inside out. So now, as you can see, the two sides that are ultimately going to be facing outwards are inwards now.

I pinned them together again, and started sewing along the window edge mark. There is a portion of the curtain that has to go around the contraption that opens and closes the window in the van, so I sewed the long edges first and left that part for last. Once I got past that part (which was a huge challenge since I just learned how to sew), I stopped sewing about 3 inches from the end so I could fit my hand inside and pull the curtain rightside out.

When I pulled the curtain rightside out, I did a quick seam over the edges to close it. Then I moved onto sewing the velcro patches on.

This is what the final result looked like!





But then…the next day the velcro adhesive melted off the window. The blistering sun and 120 degree car interior was just too much for it.

What I think I’m going to try to do next is attach suction cups to the curtain and try to stick it to the window that way. If you look at the picture above, you can see that the edges of my windows are tough to attach things to, and the nature of the plastic makes it hard to use adhesive on it.





I’m going to figure this out one way or another. Stay tuned!