Sew Curtain Panels, step by step

Our recent road trip to see Katie and her remarkable house gave us that tickle to get down to business when we got back home. You know how your Hands-on momentum is up and you are moving right along ticking things off your to-do list and then the dust clears and you are simply spent and need a little break? Like, mehaps, a road trip? That seems to be the way it goes with us. When it comes to house progress, we tend to work in fits and starts. But then something sparks that get-back-to-business excitement and suddenly we are done with our four-ish day Hammer And Paint Brush Hiatus and are refreshed and ready to go. Yeah, so that happened.

I guess being on the road produced that absence makes the heart grow fonder effect. Not that we were mad at our house, but we simply were not raring to go when we left like we were when we got back. So the morning after our 9.5 hour drive I woke up early, sorted through a million (ok, a thousand) photos, wrote that shopping post that went up in the afternoon, caught up on comments/Facebook/Twitter/email, wrote this house crashing post for the next morning, and then it was dinner time. Then I up and made dining room curtains. And they might simply be my go-to things in the whole darn house.

Seriously, I enjoy them.

You folks know we are into our hallway frame gallery a little too much (along with our giant bedroom light fixture and humongous gray sectional). And I adore my weird horse art and miscellaneous ceramic animal menagerie. But you’d think I carried these curtains for nine months and went through 48 hours of labor to bring them into this world – that is how much I enjoy them. And it only took me about an hour and a half – two tops – to make them. Wham, bam, thank you Katie (for the kick-in-the-pants inspiration that your vivid house provided).

Here is how it all went down. We already mentioned snagging this deeply discounted Robert Allen curtain fabric from a local fabric outlet called U-Fab (for any non locals, here is an affiliate link to the same fabric on amazon). It was fancy schmancy designer fabric that I’d been in love with forever, but it was marked down to $12.99 a yard (as opposed to the original cost of $40+ a yard!) thanks to a bit of an irregularity in the fabric (a white stripe that ran down one side, which I knew I could work around).

Since I hoped two 90-ish inch panels for either side of the big picture window in the dining room I calculated that five yards would do the trick, which factored out to $32 a panel (still not dirt low-cost but a whole lot cheaper than the regular price of that fabric, which would have run me $100 a panel). Score.

We are simply not truly curtain closing and opening folks (except in the nursery since we close the blinds and draw the curtains – anything for five more minutes of sleep) so we do not plan to draw them shut (we add white faux wood blinds or bamboo shades when it comes to in fact gaining privacy, although since we typically hang out in the back of the house when it is dark sufficient to see into the windows, we are not in any rush to add privacy blinds or shades simply yet). But we do enjoy hanging curtains high and wide to let the light stream in and add height and drama. Which means we did not have to worry about the width (since we’d need a lot more of that than what we had to cover the long picture window). And boy are these babies a fresh little slap in the face compared to the white Ikea Vivan curtains that we embraced in nearly every room of our last house.

But on to how I made them. First I rolled out the fabric on a 5 x 8′ rug in our office (one of my fully not patented ways to get straight cuts since you can line up the fabric with the corners/edges of the rug to be sure it is square before snipping away). Then I simply pulled out my tape measure to see how long I hoped them (90″ each before hem allowances, which would make them about 87″ long after hemming – but then I add ring hooks which make them 90″ again):

It was as plain as lining up the end of the fabric with the 90″ mark on my tape measure and then cutting the other edge against the rug at the 0″ inch mark, for a pleasant straight cut (sure sufficient, I was left with a pleasant 90″ long rectangular swatch of fabric).

When it comes to the width, I simply typically go with the width that it comes right off the bolt (which is wider when you get upholster fabric like this- ours was 57″). But remember it had that defect running along one side of it, so I simply cut three inches or so from that side (again I used the edge of the rug to get a straight cut). But I did not fully cut off the white part since I knew once I hemmed it, it would be fully invisible (even from the back). You can see the normal white edge that comes on fabric on the right of the swatch below and the irregular white defect on the bottom half of the left edge below:

So there I had one 90 x 54″ curtain panel cut out, and simply needed one for the other side of the window. So I laid the freshly cut one on top of the uncut remnant of fabric and used it as a template to create another panel of exactly the same size:

Then I washed both curtain panels so they would be “pre-shrunk” and straightforward to launder from here on out (one of our main goals is to have as many “washable” surfaces in the kitchen and dining room as possible). Oh but it is consistently smartest to preshrink fabric before you cut it, I simply knew I only had sufficient fabric to make two panels of this size so whether I washed or cut it first (or cut and washed it later) I’d end up with the same sized panels in the end. I grabbed them fresh out of the dryer instead of letting them sit there to keep them wrinkle free for the most part.

Next I had to decide between my trusty curtain-making method of using iron-on hem tape or the slightly scary idea of using Oh Brother (my new sewing machine) to attempt to do what I used to use hem tape for. After a decent amount of out-loud debate with myself, I chose to try my hand at sewing curtain panels- simply to see if I could do it (but you can find full curtain making walkthroughs with hem tape here and here). Even without my hem-tape security blanket, I did break out the iron to make a half inch “seam” down one of the short sides of the curtain. It simply seems like now whenever I dabble in sewing, I find myself trying to iron instead of pinning – simply to see if it’ll work. Am I a rebel or what?

The ironed seam certainly stayed put while I dragged the giant fabric swatch back into the kitchen to sew the hem, so I happily skipped the pinning step and even boldly (well, perhaps that adjective is a stretch) chose to try another hemming technique that some of you have commented to tell me about in previous I am-a-shaky-little-sewing-novice posts. I took the ironed seam and folded it over one more time, then I sewed down the seam to create a pleasant wrapped up looking hem (even from the back). That extra fold hid the raw cut edge of the fabric, if that makes sense. And even with my extra folding step, there was thankfully no pinning required. Sweet.

See, here is what it looked like fully folded over as I sewed down the seam.

And this method surprisingly worked on all sides (I worried the long 90″ sides of the panels would not take to ironing and would need to be pinned, but it went simply as well as the short sides). And as for the defect, you can see how when I folded the hem over one more time, it became invisible and I was once again left with a wrapped up looking edge from both the front and the back.

Here is how the back of a corner looked once I was done with my quickie ironing-then-folding-then-hemming technique:

Then I clipped seven oil-rubbed bronze ring clips to each panel (from Target) and slipped them onto a especially long oil-rubbed bronze rod. Oh how I enjoy not having to sew a rod pocket or anything complicated thanks to the magic of ring clips. I ended up getting the curtain rod from Lowe’s since the ones at Target were not long sufficient – I ended up needing 144″ of length (that is what she said).

Our curtain hanging method (also not patented or even endorsed) is for one of us to then stand on a chair (in this case, John) while the other one steps back and looks at the length of the curtains and how they hit the floor while the chair-stander raises and lowers the rod ever so slightly until the floor-stander screams “ideal- do not move an inch or I will kill you” and then runs up to hold a rod bracket under the perfectly held rod to measure the distance from the crown molding or ceiling that it should be hung to keep the rod right where it is being held.

Of course this only deals with the height of the rod and not the width, but we typically like to go as wide as we can with the curtains so they drape in front of the wall instead of blocking light and hanging in front of the window. In this case we went as wide as our extra long rod allowed (19″ outside of the window molding on each side). See how the panel simply kisses the window and blocks wall instead of light?

Oh and notice how the curtain also seems to simply graze the floor ever so slightly? Poor John raised and lowered the curtain on that chair fifteen times until it was juuuust right. We have tried measuring the wall or the panel instead of doing the by-eye real-test (involving two people, a chair, and some serious arm strength and balancing skillz) but you simply cannot beat the result. At least we cannot. So we keep going back to it. And I tell John he’s my Atlas when he’s up there holding the rod up. Gotta keep team morale up.

Here is another rod shot for you. You can also see how the curtains simply hang slightly in front of the window trim here as opposed to blocking the whole side window, which is only 20″ wide. Since we mentioned that we hung the panels 19″ wide on each side of the window trim, you can totally see how if they were hung flush with the trim they would block all but one inch of that 20″ side window. Which is certainly not what we were going for.

You will have to excuse all of the wide shots of the room in this post. Things like the curtains and the room in general are coming off greener/yellower than they are in real life (the green grass/trees/bushes outside were casting a yellow-green tint through the big light-filled window, and I was too lazy to photoshop it). John will certainly be in charge of photos of this room next time around. As for the true color of the curtains, it is best depicted in the closer shots without a lot of window going on, like the ones above.

In fact this shot is likely the most accurate to what they look like in real life. I’d describe them as mostly blue with hits of green, chartreuse, white, and brown. Crazy busy but also crazy vivid if you are me (and miracle of all miracles, John loves them too). Who ever would have thought that two white curtain fiends like us could branch out and embrace curtain color and pattern? I wonder if my mom will like these or they’ll at last be a choice that she will not endorse. What say you, mom?

Here is another wide shot where they look more yellow/green than they truly do in real life (they are more like a teal blue color when you glance at them from afar) but you get the idea. Oh and the dark rod ties into the other deep tones in the room (the chair legs and dark dining table, the deep color on the back of the built-ins, etc). So that is why I chose it over stainless or white. I consistently think a dark rod hung high and wide is like eyeliner on a window.

Mmmm, here is a good shot of my go-to detail in the fabric. See those smeary turquoise blobs? They tie so deliciously into the slightly darker teal on the back of the built-ins. Yummy. Even the little yellow-green knobs that we brought in to the base cabinets of the built-ins relate perfectly to the pops of bright yellowy-green chartreuse in the curtains. Hooray for glad accidents like that (we had no idea what curtain fabric we’d pick when we snagged those babies at Hobby Lobby).

Oh yeah and I had some lively setting the table. Not that anyone’s coming over today. Or tomorrow. I simply hoped to pull out a runner and some plates and cups and clip some random branches from outside. Why? I do not know. Why do birds sing? I guess the colorful curtains got me hot and bothered sufficient to break out Sue the Napkin (times seven) and add some lively to the big empty wood table.

And guess what? I am leaving everything there tonight. Simply because I am weird and I cannot wait to wake up in and morning and pad in there and smile. Kind of like how I paint a room and the next morning I run in and look at it again. Simply grinning at the wall like a fool.

Is not it remarkable how much of a difference curtains can make? Well, that and some rich color on the back of those built-ins. Here is a little flash back to the room as it looked when we moved in:

And here it is now (albeit a little side-heavy with that bare wall on the left- for now):

Thought I was done? Nope. One more thing. Here is a terribly rendered depiction of the doorway that we cannot wait to add that will connect the dining room to the kitchen (we plan to mirror the size of the picture window so the whole room feels pleasant and balanced). And of course adding a big chandelier over our giant table will add a lot more function (the room does not have any ceiling fixtures!):

It is so funny to remember that this room was a formal living room when we toured this house (and the office was the dining room). In fact we dug up these old shots that we took during our first walk through:

Gosh, that feels like a million years ago and it was less than six months back. As soon as we walked in we were struck by three things: we reeeally hoped the house, we hoped to change up a few of the rooms, and we reeeeally hoped the house. Yup, we were sold upon entry. I do not think we ever got into the specifics, but the sellers were not 99% sure they even hoped to sell. In fact the night after we walked through the house for the first time they took their stuff out of storage. A sure sign to the realtor that they might take it off the market. Thank goodness it all worked out and they ended up accepting our offer.

As for looking past the way a room looks when you are house hunting to see “the real space” we simply fully discount furnishings and wallpaper and paint color and even whole room functions. That is how we could look past the dining table and the sofa to nearly immediately proclaim that converting the dining room into an office and turning the living room into a big spacious dining room would work more for the way we live. You know, since we have a large family that we could not cram into the former dining room, a giant living room in the back of the house (no need for two), and a penchant for open living and big wiiiide doorways. We simply cannot assist ourselves. Anyway, have you folks made any curtains lately? Knocked down any walls? Set the table for nothing but kicks?

Pssst – Soooo not a sewing person? I was not either. Here is a walkthrough for making no-sew curtains with iron-on hem tape (and here is another one for good measure).

Update – Wanna know where we got something in our house or what paint color we used? Simply click on this button: