My little craft room is coming along, so I wanted to show y’all one more project before the big reveal.
I looked and looked for bright modern curtains that wouldn’t the bank, but after weeks of looking, I finally resolved to make my own. I ordered a few samples of fabric online and selected Erin McMorris’ Sophie’s Garden in Orange as the winner.
I made sure to order enough to reach almost floor to ceiling, with extra in case I wanted to cover pillows or my chair seat cushion (both of which I did). I cut the fabric to length for the 2 panels, leaving about 10 inches extra for the hem on the top and bottom, and ironed it to make sure it was perfectly smooth for attaching the lining.
Next I cut the 2 linings to size, ironed, and then pinned them to the floral fabric. The fabric I chose for the lining was about ½” wider than the curtain material, so when I pinned them together, I made sure to turn one edge of the lining over an extra time before pinning it to the floral fabric. Since I didn’t have to trim the edges of either fabric, I only had to turn over the side hems once and sew.
Next I folded over the top edge of the exterior fabric about ½” and ironed and then another 3 inches and ironed to prepare for the top hem of the curtain. The liner was pinned up inside this fold.
Before I sewed the top hem, I cut out 7 pieces of liner fabric per panel about 2.5” wide and just slightly longer than the top hem (about 3.5”). After hemming up all four edges of these pieces, I laid them out evenly across the top hem of the curtain to become the tabs for the rod to slide through.
I pinned the tabs in place and sewed across the hem of the curtain, liner and tabs all in one pass. Then I hand sewed the top of the tabs to the curtain, making sure my stitches did not go through both layers to show on the front of the panel.
After both panels were this far along, I hung them from my curtain rod, about 3 inches from the ceiling. This allowed me to know exactly where the bottom hem should fall. I pinned them up on the bottom, took them back down and sewed the bottom hem in place.
(There’s a sneak peak at our new bed frame as well! A craigslist find – love it!)
One thing I learned from looking at a (professionally made) lined curtain in another room in our house was that the bottom hem of the liner should not be sewn into the bottom hem of the curtain material. Therefore the exterior curtain fabric got a nice chunky 3” bottom hem, while the liner got a less substantial 1” hem that fell an inch or two above the bottom line of the curtain.
There you have it! The finished product. Now the countdown begins to the finished room – stay tuned!
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