New Crazy Love Curtains! +Tutorial

This week I will be working on the biggest FAMILY project of the month for me.....my daughter's room makeover! She becomes a teenager this week, <sniff, sniff> and will also be getting her own room for the first time since her sister joined our family when she was 2. :) So, a complete and more grown-up room was in order. And LUCKY for me, she chose this....

Sigh. Pause. Soak.

I know....gorgeous right??? She has picked an assortment of scrumptious Sis Boom fabrics for all the accents and what a treat for me! Today I'm sharing the first item on the list, curtains. She & I both were giddy with how they turned out!

We were originally planning a ruffled edge on the curtains, but when we saw the Reading Nook Curtains at vixenMade, we decided we liked this idea even better!

We also decided we liked the idea of adding tabs at the top of the curtains to incorporate the accent fabric there as well. Using a similar curtain we had here as a guide to the way it should be constructed, this is how I made them:

Curtain Panels - 3 yards

Accent Ruffles & Tabs - 1 yard

• Cut your panels 1.5 yard each. (or based on the measurement of your window)
• Hem the sides of each curtain panel. Leaving the top and bottom edges raw.
• Cut a strip of the accent fabric 3" by Width of Fabric (WOF).
• Iron the raw edges in 1/2" on top & bottom of the strip.

• Iron the top edge of your curtain panel down 1/2".
• Pin the accent strip along the top of the panel, Wrong Sides Together (WST), set aside.

 This is where we determined the length we wanted the tabs. We decided we didn't want them very long, so I cut our strips for the tabs 6" x 2".

Determine the number of tabs you will need based on the width of your curtain panel and how far apart you'd like them spaced. Our panels are the WOF or about 42" wide, so we used 9 tabs on each. To make and attach your tabs, do the following:

• Cut 2 rectangles for each tab.
• Pin Right Sides Together (RST) and stitch 1/4" seams along each of the long sides.
• Turn. Iron. Top-stitch.

•  Beginning at one end, position one of the tabs along the edge sandwiched between the curtain panel and strip on the back. Line the raw edges of the tab with the raw edge of the hem about 1/2" from the top edge. Pin in place.

•  Space the tabs evenly apart along the top. For our panel, this was every 3".

• Top-stitch along the top edge, and then again about 1/4" from that. Then a third time along the bottom edge of the inner strip. This secures the tabs and provides a very nice finish.

• Create your ruffle(s). For this step I cut two 4" strips the WOF, joined them to make one long strip and used a rolled hem in pink along the long edges. I then gathered the ruffle using my favorite quick & easy gathering technique.
• Pin the ruffle(s) in place where you'd like them on the panel and stitch. Ours were 6.5" from the bottom.

 

•  Final step is to hem the bottom of your curtain panels. I saved this until the last step so I could hang the curtains once the tabs were attached to determine where to hem.

 Now you are ready to stand back and admire your work!

Enjoy!

Kristy