Making Curtains

Making curtains is a wonderful skill. Curtains can be costly and just by changing the curtains you can change the look of a room. Recently we have move our 19 month old daughter into her big brothers room in preparation for our new baby which will be joining us in early 2014. The curtains he had up had been there for 5 years, were Thomas the Tank and I wanted some thing slightly more gender neutral as well he

First off trying to find a suitable fabric was way harder than I had thought. Everything is either strongly male or female. In the end I found this print at Spotlight and even thought its a lot of blue thought it was nice and cheery and I will make sure miss has her girly touches in other places.wanted new curtains and it was part of the sweetener to sharing his room.

 

Before you have your fabric measured off you need to know the size of your window so measure the width and the length. When talking curtains we talk about the drop which is the length. Because the window I was putting the curtains on are not to the floor I added 20cm to the drop length  just for looks, then a further 10cm for hemming at the bottom and 20cm at the top for the heading tap so for a window that is 150cm drop each length of the fabric needs to be:
150cm window length
20cm  extra
10cm hemming
20cm heading tap
equals 200cm

The next step is to decide how much gather you want in your curtains. I think that about double the width is good but I am also flexible depending on the width on the fabric. In this case the window was 200cm and the fabric 120cm wide. if I was stick to the double rule I would have been trimming off 20cm portions to hem up and frankly that only sounds like extra work that I can leave out so I got 4 time the 200cm I needed for my curtains. I think its best when getting more than about 4m of fabric to get it put on roll as it is easier to manage.

 

Making the curtains

Step 1:Cut the amount of drops required. So for me that was 4 200cm drops. Remember measure twice cut once.

 

Step 2: Sew drops together. So I have two curtains I sewed 2 of the 200cm drops together length ways twice. Easy.

 

Step 3: Hem the sides is very easy fold over 2cm and sew along because in my case the sides were selvages there was no reason to fold over twice.

Step 4: Adding the header tape. You get these taps from Spotlight and the such along with the curtain rod, rings ect that you might need. As I was replacing curtain I just reused the rod and ring. The header tap helps gather the curtains and give the tops a nice gathered look. Start folding of the hem 2cm into place. Then fold again the width of the tap and pin into place. Make sure when you machine sew to sew top and bottom of the tap.

Step 5: Some people will say that you should hang the curtain for a week or sew then hem but frankly I aint got time for that. So I simply fold over the hem twice 5cm each time and sew along the top of the fold. I find by having a generous fold it helps weigh the curtains down. You can by weight if you feel they still need it.

Step 6: To gather the curtains there are string in built in the tapes. Tie a knot in one end and then pull the strings until you get the amount of gather you want. Don't cut the extra string just tie a knot in it and poke it into the pocket behind the tape. When you need to clean or store the curtains you can undo that string and flatten them out.

 

Step 7: The last step is to tread the ring on them put them onto the rod. You can get fancy rings and rods but I keep it simple with a basic rod and spilt rings.

I still have a few things I want to do in transforming the kids room but they go on my never ending to do list, for now I am just pleased I got one project finished.