DIY: Curtains for Super Cheap

When my mother and I went on our first road-trip to IKEA, I had decided I wanted all the window treatments on the ground floor to match. We bought 7 sets of LENDA drapes because they were inexpensive and they had a slight, but not overpowering, striped detail. Each set was $20. That is a lot of fabric for $20!
I have since decided that I do NOT want all the draperies to match, so I have lots of extra fabric.
We have a bay window in our Dining Room. It is an awkward size. (Has anyone ever noticed that the word awkward LOOKS awkward? Like aardvark. Strange.) I tried many things to cover these windows, including this ridiculous non-solution:

The Umbra Solutions Bayview Nickel Window Set. It's nickel. Check. It's fully adjustable. Check. It looks classy and is not at all cheap and looks like something someone would put up in a trailer home. Um... NO CHECK. That little adjustable part? Rubber. And as you can see in the photo, not at all the same color as the rest of the fixture. Ridiculous. I waited for that stupid thing to re-stock for a month. And then it's totally cheap and gross looking. Grrr...

I wanted roman shades, but unfortunately for me the windows are 20" on the sides and 30" in the center. No one makes shades in these sizes. And I didn't want to spend $600 on window treatments for custom.

Eventually I was inspired by a set of balloon shades I saw somewhere... Surely, it can't be too difficult to make these, right? Well, it's not. It's just time consuming. And I am lazy. So this is what our window looked like for... ohh... about 2 months.. eh, maybe 3.

Classy, I know. But remember, my kitchen "curtains" looked like this for 4 months:

And now it looks like this:

I knew it could be done.

Well, here it is:

I used one set of drapes. So all in all it cost me $20 and about 6 hours of my time.
I am going to have to rethink the ties in the fairly near future. They are simply the hems from the sides of the drapes cut off. They were already hemmed, already the right size and pliability, I thought "Why not?" Well, here's why not. They are already starting to fray. Hmm... Anyone have any ideas for ties that does not involve me sewing a 100 inch long tube of fabric?