I'll Take Blue and White Stripes, Please

Recently, I was surfing around and stopped by The Nester and noticed her striped drapes in her living room and I kinda fell in love with them.  So much so that my beady little brain started churning.  It started thinking of all kinds of ways to get me some of those drapes, too!  I wanted some badly.  My living room was in desperate need of something dramatic and bold.  And stripes were just what I was looking for.  

Since I'm into sewing lately and I have tons of fabric from that thrift store I told you about here I decided that I would use some of that fabric instead of spending extra money.  I originally thought that I wanted gray and white drapes but since my living room is painted gray I decided to go with this dark blue that I had by the roll.  I love using what I already have, especially when it is just sitting there taking up precious space.  

Warning: I do not recommend you doing your drapes they way I did.  In fact, I would recommend making them the way the Nester did hers.  Her way is much much simpler.  But, of course, I like to challenge myself (not!) and do things the most difficult way possible.  

One more warning: I did very little picture taking during this process since most of it was trial and error but I will try to describe exactly how we (you guessed it, Jer helped me on these too...gotta love that man) made them in the most simplest terms possible.  

See the roll of fabric in the picture above....from that, we first cut 14 inch strips since I wanted each of my stripes to be 12 inches thick horizontally.  This would leave me 2 extra inches for my hems on each side of the stripe.  

Once we had those cut, we did the same thing with these white drapes (one panel came in a package) that we got at Bed Bath and Beyond.  These were only $15 after using my $5 coupon, which was nice since we had to get 2 packages.  

After we had all of our strips cut, I then had to cut and hem each side of the blue fabric since it was much longer (width wise) than the white panels.  This was a pain in the arse.  

Here they are pinned and ready to be hemmed.

Once those were hemmed, we were then able to start hemming together both blue and white fabrics to make the stripes.  Below you can see my inch thick hem.  This would ensure my stripes would end up being 12 inches.

And we have one set done!  But before we moved on, we pulled the iron out and ironed them so that the the crease was flat and not sticking out due to the extra 1 inch hem (since the blue fabric was VERY thick).  This gave it a nice smooth crease.

Here's a closer picture of the crease after ironed.

We did these same steps over and over until we got.....

....this!  Instead of making a hole at the top to fit over a rod, we used clips to hold up the drapes.

I wanted them to barely graze the floor so our measurement had to be precise.  But it wasn't.  Somehow they were a little longer (must have been Jer's measurements, ha.  kidding, I actually measured them) and puddled the floor just a little.  But that's the benefit of using clips to hold them up.  We were able to fold the fabric a little bit and then clip them (since it would have been a big pain in the bootay to actually pull them both down and re-hem them).

I absolutely positively love them.  They make the room feel so clean/bold/modern which is the look we were going for.

Another benefit of using clips to hang them is....in case your stripes don't line up perfectly you can fudge it a little.  Ha.  Yeah, we ran into that problem when we initially put them up.  But now, you can't even tell that they were just a smidgen off.  Plus, by that time we were whole heartedly tired of this dang project.  It literally took us all weekend to complete.

Again, I do not recommend this way of making striped curtains unless you want to spend countless hours sewing, cutting, cursing and ironing.

In fact, another way that I've seen these done is by painting them (I'm pretty sure I saw it on Pinterest).  But, of course, we chose to do it the most hardtimeconsumingchallengingwayofdoingthem.  Oh well, they are done and we love them.  A lot.  Mucho.  Their just what our living room needed.

Happy TGIF!
xoxo,
~Jeni

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Thrifty Decor Chick

Crafty Texas Girls
Someday Crafts
Young House Love
Bower Power
Hi Sugarplum
The Kurtz Corner