Oh, now I have to admit, ironing has never been one of my favorite parts of quilt making
until Camelot came out with scented fabrics. Umm! It’s so lemony fresh.
That’s right, Camelot fabrics just came out with these awesome scented fabrics. It’s
incredible. It’s kind of like when we were kids and we had those great scratch and sniff
stickers. Not easy for me to say obviously. Now here’s another quick tip: the watermelon,
ahh! It smells luscious. And my daughter, it’s her favorite. So I’m thinking to
myself what do you do when you want to use a lot of big pieces of fabric so you can just
iron and enjoy the entire process. Well, you make curtains. So today’s tutorial, I’m
going to walk you through some basic techniques and easy steps to do these lined ruffled curtains
for you. Are you all ready?
So the first thing you really need to do before you start cutting or buying or anything is
you need to know how much fabric we’re going to use. Now, the standard practice is to take
your tape out and basically measure the distance across your window here. Ok, and I’m measuring
from the outside of the frame to the outside of the frame. And general rule of thumb is
no less than 1 ½ times the distance and usually about two times the distance. Twice the distance
gives you a nice ruffle and gather when it’s closed and looks terrific when they’re pulled
back and open like that, right? So this particular window let’s say it was roughly 40 inches
wide. So I’ve got two 40 inch panels up there for twice the distance. And lengthwise
I’m hardly even going to address because some folks like a small window with a curtain
that goes all the way to the floor. Other folks like, you know, just like hitting it
at the bottom of the window sill. So what I’m going to say is I usually add about
five inches to whatever height I have and part of that is to include the ruffle you
see up above. So let’s say it was 40 inches tall, I would add 45 inches of fabric, not
add, use I should say 45 inches of fabric. And if it’s 30 inches tall, I’m going
to use 35 inches of fabric. For something that’s going to have a couple of inches
of ruffle at the top and hit at about the bottom window sill, ok? So I’m going to
to teach you how to put the liner in. I’m going to teach you how to do the ruffle at
the top. And I’m going to teach you how to hang it first and then measure for the
bottom. Let’s get started.
So with my fabrics, the first thing I’ve done is I’ve made both my curtain fabric
and my white liner fabric. They are the same size. And what we’re going to do is we’re
going to do our pre-hemming of both sides of the liner and the print. So you can see
I’ve done a double fold and turned it over and a real simple seam allowance. So I’ve
done one side of the print, let’s do the other side. And when I’m doing this, what
I simply do is I take and I roll over with my fingers and then a second time. And I get
it maybe, I don’t know, eight inches or so worth of fabric as I approach my presser
foot and my needle and my sewing machine over here. And I’m just going to stitch this
down real quick for us.
Ok so now I have both the print and the liner materials hemmed and double folded on both
sides. Just remember rule of thumb is whatever you do to one fabric you do to the other.
Now I’m going to get set up to do the top seam. And those are going to be print sides
together or right sides together. So I’ve got one layer here. And now I’ve got my
right sides of my liner because my hem is on the outside. And I’m going to line those
up. And I’m going to sew across the top. And I’m pretty standard used to a quarter
inch seam allowance because of my quilting work. This isn’t going to have much load
on it so that’s just fine. If you want to do 3/8th no problem there as well. Let’s
run this through here real quick. Ok so that was super easy. No time necessary at all for
that. Now I might have forgot to point out the major reason we were doing our hems along
the sides first. We are going to have an opening. Follow me over to the curtains. That opening
is going to be up here in the rod pocket we’re going to call that. Or the rod sleeve. So
I want a finished edge in there because it’s going to take a lot of travel over the years
as you open and close your curtains. So that’s why we were doing that. I’ve anchored it
at the top and now we’re going to turn it right sides out. The first thing I want to
do is press this hem. I’m going to do it open first to make sure it stays nice and
crisp. All of our work for the rest of the video is going to be right sides out. Once
that’s joined like that. Ok, so we’ve got that motion. Now we’re going to flip
it. Give one last pressing. I know a lot of folks feel like curtains can be daunting for
the house. And I’ll say this, the design work, once you have that figured out, then
it’s just construction mode which is wonderful because we all love to use our irons and our
cutters and our sewing machines anyways. So it’s just that often it seems like there’s
a lot to do because we have a lot of windows. But it’s a very fun sewing project, nonetheless.
So, our next step. Let’s lay this out nice for us here. Is I’m going to measure down
from the top about 2 ½ inches. And if I’m using a chalk marker or some sort of a pencil,
I can do that. Some folks will just like to use pens. If you’re nervous about your marking,
it doesn’t matter what side we’re sewing from. So technically we could mark on the
back if you would like as well with like an air erase marker. I’m just going to go across
the front and use a simple chalk. I’m hoping you’ll be able to see it at home. And I’m
just measuring down 2 ½ inches from the top there. Let’s grab that chalk. There it is. And I just need a faint line.
I’m just going to be stitching this. And some folks, if you’re doing lots and lots
of curtains will actually just put a piece of tape or a marker on the bed of their machine
at 2 ½ inches because that’s almost more efficient than marking each and every one.
Ok, I apologize, you probably can’t see that real well at home. But I can and you’ll
get the idea. Ok.
So now we’re going to run that through the machine. And that is going to be the hem that
forms the top of the pocket for the rod. Let me get this out of my way here because it’s
caught under my presser foot. Here do I look like a real garment sewer or a quilt maker
if I wear that around the neck there? That’s even better, I quit stepping on it that way.
And here we go. Awesome. Now you have your seam done for the top of your rod pocket.
Mathematically you want to add a little bit of fabric in that rod sleeve so that you don’t
have a problem sliding the curtain back and forth. Check this out. My curtain rod I’ve
used is one of those easy extendable curtain rods. ¾ of an inch wide, right? With that,
I’ve done an 1 ½ rod pocket so that it does slide easily back and forth and doesn’t
get caught up. So to do that we’re just going to go ahead and we’re going to do
the same style of marking but now we’re marking down from the seam we’ve already
created. Ok, so I’m going to try to do this again. Mark that up nice. Ok, move that over.
A little extra marking and a little harder to see than I want you to think there. There
we go. Perfect. Now we’re going to go back to the machine. We’re going to sew down
that line as well.
Alright, now you are almost done. Couldn’t be easier as I promised. The next step we’re
going to need to do is we’re going to need to finish the curtains along the edges. So
you have two options for this. You’re going to need to topstitch the edge here closed
and the edge on the other side of the curtain closed because this is that ruffle part above
the rod. You’re also going to want to topstitch closed below the rod sleeve to the bottom.
And I do this now but I don’t sew the bottom closed and I actually leave about three inches
up from the bottom open because we’re going to hang the curtain to measure next after
we get this stitched together. If you get good at this what lot of folks will actually
do is they won’t sew the side seams as well yet. They will hang it and mark the top. But
that’s a little bit confusing for me and I’m going to show you what I consider the
easiest way. So next step we’re going to do is we’re going to topstitch this closed.
Starting at the top which makes the ruffle portion of the curtain. And right now what
I’m trying to do is I’m trying to sew right on top of the threads that I used earlier
on the print side. And when I come down to the top where that rod pocket is going to
be I’m going to backstitch to secure. I’m just going to simply jump over and now I’m
going to topstitch all the way down to a couple of inches from the bottom. Ok, so I’m going
to finish all of this sewing except for those last few inches at the bottom. I’m going
to do the other side of the curtain. But I already have it done up here on the window
so let me show you this. Just follow me if you will. This curtain I’ve already finished.
You can see it’s got the bottom hem. That was topstitched closed. But the way I did
it first is I hang my curtain up with the raw edges and you can see that I’ve left
that seam allowance open down there at the bottom so I can actually tie this in and close
it up if I need. I should say, when I need. Ok, and then what I can either do because
not all window frames are built the same. And not all windows are exactly square. It’s
just what happens when we put the trim around windows and things. I used to do construction.
So I like to hang the curtain and make sure that it visually looks perfect instead is
it a perfect 90 degree angles. So I’ll look at my curtain rod. I’ll look at the base
of my sill. I’ll make sure that everything is seated correctly. And then I’ll come
in and I’ll actually even use a fine sharpie marker and I’ll come up, excuse me I’ll
come down about one inch. And I’ll mark. And then I’ll come to the other corner where
it hits where I want it to hit. And I’ll come down that same inch and I’ll mark it.
So once I have those marked out then I take the curtain back off the rod because it’s
incredibly hard to sew with the curtain on the wall, right? And then I rotary cut it
and I fold those edges up one time. They don’t need to be double folded. I’m going to press
it closed. And then I’m going to topstitch that down and then I’m going to finish topstitching
on what is these last little open sections in here. And your entire curtain is done.
And the benefit is from the liner is it actually adds warmth. It adds privacy and it also helps
the curtain hang well. Gives it a lot of longevity, let’s the light come through nicely and
it’s very kind to your neighbors so that they’re looking at a pretty curtain instead
of the back side of the fabric because we always want the pretty side or the smell good
side on our side of the house, right? So those are some of my super easy curtain making tips
and techniques. I want to know if there’s something I forgot that you think we all need
to know about. So drop that in the comments section below and we’ll see you next time
here at Man Sewing.