Crazy Sew and Sew: More curtains

Before I start the Christmas crafting posts I just wanted to write a wee post about another pair of curtains that I made.

A couple of months ago I made a pair of bathroom curtains for my Gran which also featured in my very first blog post. Well once I had made them my other Gran started to hint that she needed a new pair of kitchen curtains! I should know by now that I can't make for one without the other but somehow I always forget.

I thought it would be a good idea to write down what I did to make the curtains. Now I am not really qualified to tell other people how to make curtains, and there are lots of tutorials out there, so this is really more of a note for my own future reference!

I started by measuring the curtains she already had up to get my finished measurements and then added 12cm to the length and made sure I had 8cm on the width for the hems. I started by checking that I had a straight edge for cutting the first curtain then lined up the pattern to ensure that I managed to match the pattern across the two curtains.

I then created a 2cm double fold hem for each of the sides.

I then stitched the sides down using the straight stitch on my machine. Actually I was very lazy and just used a strait stitch to do all my seams - no blind hemming for me! I know I was cutting corners here but to be honest the stitches vanish into the fabric and I think it looks fine.

I then folded the top down by 2cm and created a 5cm double hem at the bottom. I then struggled for ages as to how to miter the corners properly at the bottom, before settling for a mock mitered corner as per this tutorial! I think it looks ok.

The last set of curtains I made both my mum and Gran mentioned that when they have had curtains made for them before there was a small pocket for the extra hemming cord to sit when they are hung. So I pulled out a small strip of off white fabric from my stash and created this little pocket to include under the heading tape. I did this by eye and didn't take any measurements but its about 3" long and 2" wide.

I then added the header tape. I cut it to the correct width and ziz zag stitched down the two cut ends to stop it unraveling, making sure I didn't catch the cords, before attaching to the fabric. This went nice and quick, until I realised that I had sewn a pin in-between the tape and curtain fabric. Can you see the pink pin head? Oops!