Tag: sewing

DIY Curtain Tutorial

I’m proud to say that I have made all the curtains in our house.  In total, there are 5 sets: blackout curtains in our master bedroom, Grayson’s bedroom, and our bonus room, and blackout Roman shades in our living room.  The newest set (which is what I’ll be covering in this tutorial) is regular, unlined curtains in our kitchen.  Since I couldn’t think of any reason why I would need blackout curtains in my kitchen, I omitted the lining, which made these the easiest curtains I’ve made so far!

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • home decor fabric (mine was 54″ wide)
  • ruler
  • scissors or rotary cutter
  • sewing machine
  • thread
  • pins
  • iron and ironing board

First, you’ll need to measure your window to determine how much fabric you’ll need.  My window is 68″ wide x 84″ tall.  The width doesn’t really matter too much unless your window is REALLY large or REALLY small, in which case you’ll want to adjust your fabric accordingly.  As far as the height goes, this will determine how many yards of fabric you’ll need.  Since I knew I wanted my curtains to hang about 6 inches above the top of the window, I added 6″ to the initial 84″ measurement, which brought my total to 90″.  So determine where you want your curtains to hang and measure from there.  Then you’ll need to add 10 inches to that measurement (2 inches for the top hem and 8 inches for the bottom hem).

So, here was my measurement:

90″ + 10″ = 100″

That was the total for one side.  Remember you’ll need to make two curtains.  So my total fabric length needed to be 200 inches.  Since I like to play it safe and have some extra fabric just in case, I bought 6 yards of fabric (or 216 inches).

Measure and cut your fabric.  You may need to fold your fabric in half lengthwise once or twice to be able to cut in a straight line if you’re using a cutting mat (which I highly recommend).

Once your fabric is cut, turn it so the wrong side is facing up.  Fold and press the side of your fabric (going lengthwise) one inch, or if your fabric has designer and color information on the side like mine did (see picture above) you can fold it until you start to see the pattern on the right side of the fabric.

Fold and press one more time so that you have a one inch hem going down the length of your fabric.

Pin in place and repeat on the other side.

Sew both hems as close to the edge as possible.  Don’t forget to back stitch at the top and bottom of your fabric to secure the thread.

Here you can see my stitch placement on the hem.

Time for the bottom hem.  Make sure your fabric is still facing with the wrong side up and turn up your fabric 4 inches (across the width) and press.

Fold up 4 inches again and press.  This will create a nice thick hem at the bottom.

Pin in place and sew as close to the top edge as possible (just like you did with the sides).

Here’s another example of my stitch placement on the bottom hem.

We’re almost done!  Time for the top and final hem!  Turn and press your fabric one inch.

Turn up one inch again and press.

Pin in place and sew.  You’re all done with the sewing!!! Now we just need to attach our curtain rings and hang it up!

These curtain rings with the clips are such a time saver, because you don’t have to worry about making holes for the rings!

Tada!!!!  Beautiful new curtains, and you made them yourself!!

These curtains add that special touch I was looking for in my kitchen.  I can’t believe it took me almost three years to decide this window needed some pzazz!

Here’s a picture of them closed.  They’re so colorful and cheery!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section.

Yellow Scrappy Table Runner

I’ve been learning how to quilt recently, as you saw in this post, so when my friend Jenni’s birthday came up, I decided it might be a cute idea to make her a quilted table runner as a gift.  I decided this the night before we were supposed to go to her birthday dinner, and I didn’t even have fabric yet.  So I ran over to Joann’s and bought some cute fabric (and of course I didn’t just buy fabric for this one project….because how often do I go to Joann’s and only get what I came for?  Umm….I think never.)  Anyway, I think it turned out really cute, so I thought I’d give a little tutorial on how I did it!

I selected the fabric I wanted to use, and got a larger piece of coordinating fabric for the back and binding.   I was already home before I realized that I probably should have gotten 2 different fabrics for the back and binding, but oh well.  You live and you learn.  It still turned out cute.

First, press all your fabric so that you don’t have to work around any unruly creases or folds.

Then measure and cut strips from your fabric.  I cut 4 strips from each piece of fabric in varying widths.  I had 6 different fabrics I was using for the front, so that totaled 24 strips in all, but you can add more fabric or more strips depending on how long you want your table runner to be.  Remember when you’re cutting that you’re going to need a 1/4 inch seam allowance on all the strips, so cut it 1/2 inch bigger than you want the final width to be.

Next, lay out your strips in the order that you want them, then when you have your desired length and width, cut out your backing piece so that it’s slightly bigger than the fabric strips.

One at a time, pin and sew the strips together, with the right sides facing each other.  Remember to use a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

There should be a marker on your sewing machine and/or sewing foot that shows you where 1/4 inch is.

Here’s what the strips will look like when they’re all sewn together.  It doesn’t matter if the edges are perfectly straight, because we’ll be trimming those later.

Cut out some quilt batting to match the size of your backing fabric.  Your backing fabric should be laying right side down when you lay the batting on top.

Lay your strips on top of the batting and smooth out so that there are no loose or wrinkled spots.

Then pin through all 3 layers of fabric and batting so that you make a quilt sandwich that won’t move around.  You’ll want to pin every 6 inches or so in every direction so that the fabric won’t move while you’re sewing it together.  You can also use quilting safety pins, or fusible fleece batting that you can actually iron onto your backing and front fabric so that it basically glues itself to the fabric so you don’t have to worry about pinning.

Now it’s time to quilt.  I just used the seams as a guideline and did straight lines across on either side of each seam, but you can do any quilting pattern that you want.  I don’t have a free motion foot for my sewing machine, so I can only sew in straight lines for now.  But hopefully I’ll get one soon so I can try out all those cool quilting patterns!

Once you get toward the end, you’ll want to roll up the other side of the table runner so that it’s not all bunched up when you’re trying to sew.  It makes life a lot easier!

Trim away any excess batting or uneven edges.

Now comes the binding, which can be pretty tricky.  Cut 4 strips of fabric that are 2 1/2 inches wide.  As for length, I kind of eyeballed it, and just did it as long as my original backing fabric was.  In the picture above, you can see that I folded my fabric in half twice so that I could better cut a straight line.  It was also a time saver to do it this way!

Sew the ends of the binding strips together (right sides together and 1/4 inch seam allowance) and press open the seams so they lay flat.

Then fold your fabric in half so that the right sides are facing out, and press.  This is so you have a nice thick, double binding.

Pin the binding all the way around your table runner with the rough edge facing out, and flush with the rough edge of the table runner.

It’ll look like this when you’re done pinning.

Sew around with a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Your corners should look like this.  I don’t think I’ll be very good at explaining this, so you can watch this video on binding a quilt.  You’ll be folding the binding around to the back of the table runner and sewing that in place as well, so you’ll have a pretty border around your quilt that hides the rough edges.

Tada!  Here’s the finished table runner!  You can also wash and dry this table runner if you want it to have a more wrinkly and quilted appearance.

I think I might just have to make one of these for myself as well!  You could also do it in Christmas colors for a nice holiday decoration, or for any season really.  It’s a pretty and easy way to change the look of your kitchen throughout the year.  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and that I explained everything without confusing you.  You can always leave a comment if you have any questions and I will try my best to answer them.

Crochet Hook Case

I’ve been wanting to make a case for my assortment of crochet hooks for the longest time, and I found a pattern online several months ago, bought all the supplies, and then never got around to making it.  Until last night!  Now I finally have an organized place for all my crochet hooks!  I used to have a small plastic case, but since I have so many, they didn’t all fit, and whenever I needed to crochet something, I would inevitably not be able to find the exact crochet hook I was looking for.

Here is the free tutorial I found online.  That link will take you to a page with several different styles of cases, but I chose to do the one on the top left.  I just thought it was the cutest.

It was my first time using quilt batting, and let me tell you, it’s not that easy to work with that stuff.  First of all, it loses it’s shape very easily, getting stretched out if you pull on it too hard.  And secondly, it didn’t always want to glide through my sewing machine very well.  My bobbin got tangled up a few times as a result.  For those of you that are new to sewing or have never sewn with a sewing machine before, a bobbin is a little spool on a sewing machine that holds some of the thread that is used to sew your stitches.  Don’t worry, I didn’t know that until I was reading the directions on how to set up my sewing machine for the first time.

I was able to figure out how to sew little pockets for each of my hooks.  As you can see, I marked where i THOUGHT I wanted the pockets to be, and then when I started sewing, I realized I had made a few too small, so I had to adjust accordingly.  Which meant that I was left with some pen lines on my fabric.  Hopefully they’ll fade with age.  Or I guess I could always throw it into the washing machine.

Look at the cute ribbon ties and buttons!  I think that is my favorite feature.  If you are a person that crochets alot and doesn’t have a place to store your hooks, I highly recommend making one of these cute cases.  It’ll make your life so much easier.