Make Inexpensive Curtains Look Custom!

6 Materials
$60
30 Minutes
Easy
Hi! It's Jess from Jessica Welling Interiors. After choosing paint colors, curtains seem to be one of my clients & reader's biggest challenges. And it's not hard to see why- there are so many options and a lot of confusing information out there! One of the most common decorating mistakes I see are curtain panels that aren't wide enough for the window they're dressing. Whether you want to be able to pull them shut, or they're just for decoration, they should look substantial. And for many common-sized windows, the standard 54" wide curtain panels you can buy off the rack are just not wide enough. You can see what I'm talking about in the photo below.
Do you see what I mean? These look sort of cheap and insubstantial, don't they? But never fear! I've got a super-easy hack to take care of this problem. We're going to sew two inexpensive store-bought curtain panels together to make a wider panel. We'll start by washing the curtains (assuming your fabric is washable)- delicate cycle, Woolite, and hang them to dry! If they're going to shrink, we want them to do it BEFORE we sew them together.
Line up the curtain panels, so that the long sides are together, and pin them.
Sew the two panels together down the length of the curtains, just inside the hem.
It should look like this from the back when you're done.
Now hang them up on your curtain rod.
They're probably a bit long, like this. Now it's time to hem them. We want the fabric to just barely brush the floor.
Fold the excess fabric up, so that the bottom fold just brushes the floor, and pin it.
Do this all the way across the bottom, placing a pin every six inches or so.
Now sew all the way across the bottom of the large curtain panel, removing the sewing pins as you go.
Now repeat all of this for the other side of the window, hang up your curtains, and you're done!
See how much better that looks? Could you use some more design help? Come check out my Living Room Design Guide! It's free and I'll walk you through the whole process.
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Jessica Welling Interiors
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3 of 10 comments
  • LanieSue LanieSue on Sep 11, 2020

    If you don't plan on closing them, a valance made from a third pair of the same pattern would look good between the curtains, IMHO.

  • Deb Deb on Sep 12, 2020

    Nice job. So glad to see you didn't 'puddle' the drapes (that fad is so ugly to me).

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