Making Curtains - Knitting in the Park

My DIY Attempt at Curtains

Since we moved into this house I have wanted to update the basement trim, and curtains. Our previous owner had this red tinted faux wood trim, with matching slatted blinds. The blinds never really worked well and always got caught. When I needed to block light for filming youtube videos for my clients or my own channel, they didn’t get the job done. Well now that we’re moving, I’m finally getting to scratch that itch. We updated the paint. My husband redid the trim and I’m going to DIY the curtains.

Making Curtains - Getting Our House Ready to Sell

The Process of Making Curtains

The first step was choosing my material. I wanted to work with something that I already had. This lead me to pull out my stash of cotton material and from here I looked for something a bit neutral. I settled on a beige quilting cotton full of small pink flowers and I really like it. It’s not super opaque but it’s not sheer either. The lighter cotton has a nice drape to it as well.

I needed two panels for each curtain rod. I took the length of the window and added a bit to it which I’ll walk through next.

Next I measured my windows. Cutting the fabric to size meant that I needed to fold and hem the edges. That meant I’d lose about a half of an inch on three sides. I folded 1/4 of an inch, and ironed it twice. Then pinned it. And stitched it.

For the top, I needed to create a pocket through which the small curtain rod would slide. I needed about half an inch of pocket space, and then another 1/4 to 1/2 inch for a hem. That meant I’d lose about 1 inch total in length, and about 2 inches total in height.

My finished product from my venture into making curtains.

The Outcome

It turned out that I had enough of this material to make my curtains, but ideally I would have liked them to be a bit fuller. Overall, I’m really happy with my DIY curtain job. They’re cute and fit into the overall grey room really well. They do their job blocking out the light, and covering up the bit of mulch you can see in the beds around the house.

As I said, would it have been nice if they had a bit more fullness? Yes. But that is a learning experience for another day. Ideally I think I would have liked to take the length plus another 1/2 of the length of the window for each curtain.

I’m happy enough with these that I think I might repeat the process for certain rooms in our new house!