The Easiest Curtains Ever

Well maybe not the easiest.  The easiest would be just buying curtains that fit or tacking some cloth up there with thumb tacks, that would be pretty easy.  This project does contain sewing, but very little and really no hemming, which is the hard part (at least it is for me).

When we moved in, our bedroom was the only room that didn't have doors on the closet.  It had a curtain, which is fine, if the curtain fits.  This curtain was a sheer red number that was about four inches too long.  It drug on the floor and collected pet hair, you pet owners know what I'm talking about.  It was the first thing I took down.  I may have despised it.  And anyway, it wouldn't go with our soothing, cool blue walls.

But that left us with our closet exposed, FOR A WHOLE YEAR.  Now I've seen plenty of people take their closet doors off and love it, but our closet was not made for that.  It's very small and was a huge eye sore.  The top was all of J's black only wardrobe, and good god does this man have a lot of clothes.  Possibly three times as much as I do.  And the bottom was my stuff, all organized by color, thank you OCD, plus a ton of plastic boxes that are organizing our things for now.  Not exactly pretty.  It had the ability to grab your attention, like a car wreck that you just can't look away from.  I mean look at it, I'm actually embarrassed to even show it off. 

That all changed the other day.  I was sick of waking up and looking at that unsightly mess.  The rest of the room is coming together so nice, and then there was that.  Blah.  I was determined to make something, with supplies I had.  It just so happened that I had curtains from our old place that were black and white.  Well, one was white and one was black.  Perfect.

So off  I went with a tape measure.  I measured the closet door and decided on a length that would work the best.

Now I don't have pictures of the whole process, my working conditions were deplorable.  I was also painting my studio, so I had to work in cramped conditions on the sun porch with a pug "helping" every step of the way.  So thanks to Inkscape, I was able to draw up some step by steps.    

I started with the white curtain, this will be referred to as "curtain one".  It was a tab curtain that we picked up a while ago to give us a little privacy in our old bedroom.  I don't remember where we got it, I think Menards.  It's a canvas type material and both sides would be wide enough for our closet door.

The length of the curtains was about 17 inches too short, so that's where "curtain two" came into the picture.

 
Curtain Two was a sheer black curtain that we bought for our old bedroom for that layered look, basically we thought the white curtain was too plain.  This curtain was wider then the first, but that was fixable.

Once I had the length and width thing figured out, I set to work making the curtains.  I cut the first curtain in half.  I didn't measure, I just folded the curtain in half and cut.  This method seemed to work fine for me.  Sorry mom. 

 
I then cut the top hem off the second curtain.  After I had done that, I realized I could have just taken the hem out and wasted less fabric, but that's okay.  How ever you do it, just get rid of that top hem.

I cut 19 inches of the fabric.  I needed 17, but I wanted to be safe, so I went a little bit larger for safety's sake.  You can always shorten something, you can't always lengthen it.

Since curtain two was a little bit wider then curtain one, I cut the edges off and serged the side with a nice rolled hem.  Now if you don't have a serger, that's okay, you can just quickly hem the sides.  The end rectangle should be the exact (or close enough) width as curtain one.

Once I had my rectangle of fabric, I just sewed the it to the top section of curtain one and then sewed it to the bottom section.  I used my serger for this as well, but a regular sewing machine will work just as well.  I then repeated the whole process for the second curtain.  The only thing left to do was to hold my breath and hope they worked.

THEY DID!  Okay, so I may have had to adjust one of them a bit, but it wasn't a big deal.  And because I started with hemmed, hangable curtains, I didn't have to fuss with anything.  I just cut in half, sewed in a panel, and hung.  Now that's my kind of project.

And I have to say they look much nicer then an open black hole of t-shirts, luring you to step closer only to suck you in, never to be heard from again.  Now just to get that pesky trim painted white.  :-)