Curtains out of a duvet

  

I'm redoing all the rooms upstairs.  Yes, every single one of them.  The rooms are slowly coming along and I am trying to re-purpose as much as possible.  When I asked E. the colors he wanted in his room, he told me blue.  Lately, I have been into stripes.  I think half the number of dresses I have in my closet are striped so you can probably bet that every room upstairs will have some sort of stripe in them.  So when I saw this duvet, I bought it because I loved it.

The duvet sat in the closet for a month.  E. and I went fabric shopping for curtains and I fell in love with once again, the navy and white striped fabric.  At $8.99 a yard, I would have spent approximately $17.98 for 4 yards (using my 50% off coupon).  Then I would have spent another $11.96 buying the cheapest muslin fabric to line the back for a total of $29.94.  That to me is actually not a bad price.

However, I realized I had a duvet in the closet with the same color and I definitely didn't want the room to be matchy matchy so I went home and decided to use the actual duvet as fabric for the curtains.

 

I don't have pictures of the process as it was midnight when I started and it was all done on a whim.  However, it was the EASIEST pair of curtains I had ever made.  First, I laid the fabric out on the floor and cut right down the center.

 

I turned right sides of the fabric together and sewed straight down (where I had made the cut).  I flipped the fabric back with right sides facing out and button the duvet together which were hidden so it was basically hemmed for me!

 

The last step, I sewed one straight line at the top so that I could place a rod in it to hang.  If you have curtain clips you can omit this step all together.

I couldn't believe that it took me 15 minutes to have a pair of lined and hemmed curtains.  The final price was only $13.48 as the queen sized duvet was on clearance!  Plus, I had 2 pillow shams as well!  You can't beat that now can you?  What's even better is that I love love love the curtains and so does E.

Under the Sink Curtains

My sister is currently renovating her kitchen.  Although she still has a few things to tackle, she is hosting our book club meet this week so as a temporary solution to the hole underneath the sink, she asked me to sew her a curtain.  She replaced her sink with a farmhouse sink so in doing so, the doors no longer fit.

 

Instead of leaving an empty space for all to see her garbage disposal, I made her something to cover it up.  Since her cabinets are white, I decided that a big graphic print like this black and white damask would be perfect.  To tie in the teal curtains she has in the living room and kitchen walls, I added a little trim.

Even though this curtain would be under the sink, I did not want to show any seams or stitching.  First I sewed the trim onto the fabric.  Then I folded the top of the fabric down to cover the seam and I pressed in place. 

I made a simple pocket hole on the top so the curtain rod could be inserted through and I sewed a 3 inch bottom hem with a blind stitch so no thread would be seen.

Here's the lovely hole under the sink.  Its a little site for sore eyes, isn't it?

Right underneath is a tension rod to hold up the curtain.

I slipped the curtain in and voila, no more hole.

 

I think it is adorable. I love the detail and the extra layer with trim.

The kitchen is now ready for our little get together.

More details on her kitchen still to come :)

Pleated Curtains

I was finally able to work on my sister's curtains this past weekend. Here is the fun and whimsical fabric she picked out.

What was difficult was deciding upon what kind of curtains to make. The least expensive type of curtain to make is the one you slip the rod right through. We wanted a more formal look since the curtains were for the dining and living room so we decided to not go this route.

The next option were using rings. It was okay, but we wanted to take the curtains up a notch by adding pleats.

The finished product would be pleated curtains.

They are my favorite kind of curtain to have, but my least favorite to make because they take longer and cost more. Here is how we made them. Measure your window. The final measurement was 102." Therefore, we cut the lining 106" to have a three inch hem on the bottom and a one inch hem on the top.

Start by hemming the lining 3 inches.

Pin and Sew.

Cut the fabric one inch longer as your lining will be 1 inch shorter on the inside. Therefore, we measured out 107". Hem 3 inches up from the bottom once again.

Pin the lining to the fabric (right sides together). You will want the lining to be at least an inch shorter in width than the fabric. Our fabric was 54 inches while our lining was 50 inches in width. This assures you will not see the lining once it is hung. It gives it a more finished look.

Once sewn together, flip right side out.

Do you see how the fabric has a once inch overage all around the curtain?

Next, it is time to make the pleats. There are two types of pleating tapes you can buy. You can purchase the string pull or the pleating hooks type. I wanted the string pull, but unfortunately, they were sold out. Therefore, my sister went ahead and purchased the pleating hooks tape which will require an additional purchase of pleating hooks.

Fold down the top of the curtains to finished size and place the pleating tape on top of the folded fabric. MAKE sure the tape is positioned so that the opening of the grooves are on the bottom. If you sew it upside down, the hooks will not be able to be slid through and you will have to redo it.

There are sewing guides on the tape so that you do not sew into the grooves. Once sewn, now is the time to iron everything down. This will give it the finished look. Afterward, slide the prongs of the hooks into the opening of the pleating tape.

Pull them through to make the pleats.

Evenly space the hooks along the width of the curtains.

You are now done. You can either use the pleating hooks to hang the curtains or attach decorator rings to the curtains at the pleats to hang.

Here is the finished look.

I love how it turned out. It goes beautifully with the gray walls and couch.



Let's look at the before picture.



Now the after picture.

Still not quite finished, but slowly coming along.

Closet Curtains

Remember A.'s closet clean out? I had a little extra time this weekend so I decided to make some curtains for the closet to cover up the back storage.

Start out by picking out your fabric. I decided to use the same fabric as A.'s window curtains for consistency. I did add a little gray-blue twill border because I was short about 3 inches in fabric. It added an 15 extra minutes to my project, but it turned out better than my original plan.

To make curtains, decide what kind of curtains you want. I decided to make the cheapest and fastest curtains. The panels that I made were slid onto the curtain rod without any rings or any other hardware.

Start out by measuring the panel length. Mine are 67 inches. I sewed the gray-blue fabric onto the stripes first. Then, I hemmed a quarter of an inch on both sides of the panel lengthwise.

For the top of the curtain, I made a 2 inch hem, ensuring that no matter what rod I chose, it should have had no problem sliding through. You could alter the width according to your rod diameter.

I had a 4 inch hem on the bottom. Normally I have a 3 inch hem, but since I was short 4 inches with the striped fabric, I decided to make the entire gray blue fabric the hem so that you don't see the horizontal stitch line from behind the curtain.

I used a tension rod that I already had and slid the curtain onto it. It was perfect because I could remove the curtains quite easily when I needed to, without leaving any additional holes behind.

Let's remind ourselves of what the closet looked like before.



Yes, pretty bad, I know. Here it is, cleaned up without the curtain.



Now, with the curtain, it looks a lot better.

E. has already started playing behind the curtain. After I hung the curtains, my hubby asked me when I was going to work on the office curtains. He wants some curtains to cover up the french doors so he could work from home sometimes without the kids knowing. I need some fabric for that first, so shopping I'll have to do.