My first solo sewing project, complete! My parents gave me a sewing machine for Christmas, and my mom helped me get going on it a few weeks ago when we made a couple of throw pillows. She has always been such a great seamstress, making things for our home, our Halloween costumes, and more when I was growing up!
I have definitely gotten the sewing “bug” too, so I decided to embark on a new project by myself! I had grown tired of the plain white curtains in our bedroom that I quickly picked up at Home Goods while we were renovating the house 2 years ago. Time for a change to spice things up! I’ll hopefully be sharing an entire master bedroom update in a couple of months, but wanted to share the curtains as the first step.
Before I get into the logistics, I wanted to share that I have the Singer Heavy Duty 4423 sewing machine, which is what I used for this project. I can attest that it’s a great machine for a beginner!
Our bedside tables are a few years ago from Overstock.com – here’s the link to our lamps!
To no one’s surprise, the curtain panels came from Amazon! I fell in love with the color and pattern (going for blue/green/neutral vibes in the bedroom) and they were also blackout + a great price. The only catch was that they had large grommets at the top (not the look I was going for) and they were solid black on the back…
I decided to order them to see if I could make them work! We have one single window and one double window in our room, so I ordered 2 panels per window – 6 total. We have 8 foot ceilings in our ranch-style home, so I ordered the 96″ length, knowing that would give me room to cut the grommets off because of our wide crown molding. I always suggest hanging your curtain rod as close to the ceiling as possible, so for us, that’s right underneath the crown molding. I also wanted the bottom of the curtains to just skim the floor (not puddle), so I figured I would have about 6 inches of wiggle room to cut the grommets off and re-hem.
And that’s exactly what I did! I took my sewing scissors and cut straight across the seam underneath grommets to remove them. Next, I just created a hem on that raw edge by turning the fabric under (I ended up using the hem to shorten the panels another 2 inches for the length I wanted, but that will vary for every space). For the single window, this is where the sewing process ended. Since I was using 2 panels per side of the double window, I sewed each pair of panels together vertically so that they would become one.
To hang, I used these fabric hooks and rings. (And here’s the link to our curtain rods!) For reference, I used 12 hooks/rings for each panel. I wanted to create “pinch pleat” look, so the rings were spaced about 4 inches apart to create small pleats.
Now, to address the solid black backing: I decided I was going to hang my existing white curtains behind the new ones to solve that problem. To do that, I simply inserted the fabric hooks into both the white curtain panel and the new curtain panels before placing it onto the ring. It worked perfectly! The only thing I still want to do is tack the sides of the white panels onto the new ones to create a seamless edge, but it’s not totally necessary. You would never know the white panels are behind the new ones!
If you’re looking for more ideas, we also have these white curtains in our guest room on this gold rod, with these rings!
I hope this is helpful or at least interesting to those who enjoy sewing and/or interior design! Stay tuned for more updates!
