Quick Curtains

The house we have moved into is unfurnished and buying furniture has proven to be as expensive as back in the UK, sometimes even more so. Curtains for example, cost a lot if they are ready made, so to save some money and to give me a new craft project, I have decided to make my own.

The main thing with curtains is accurate measuring so you don't have curtains that don't cover your windows properly or drag on the floor, you also have to pay attention to seam allowances. Make sure you have a straight edge to begin with then carefully measure your seam allowance so your curtains don't look slanted. Also, be careful with plain fabrics because I got my seams wrong by folding one over one side and the other the other side instead of the same side!

I am not a patient person and I couldn't find curtain bands to sew into my curtains. Luckily our windows have a kind of wooden border across the top which conceals the top of the curtain. So I decided, that instead of sewing curtain hooks along the top, which would take a while, I would use safety pins.

After measuring and seaming your fabric, go to the top seam and add safety pins at regular intervals along the width of the curtain, then you simply hook the safety pins through the loops on your rail and clip shut. I used the seam line to keep the pins level then to makes sure they are evenly spaced, fold your fabric in half, add a pin at the fold, fold again, add pins to the two folds and so on until you feel you have enough. Add pins at each end. Depending on the weight of your fabric, you may need more safety pins. I find this works really well with light cotton in particular. You will notice that I have not seamed the sides, this is because they were the selvage sides and I didn't see the point if they aren't going to fray, and it doesn't matter that the selvage is unwieldy when you make curtains.