How to make horizontal striped curtains

If you have been looking around for horizontal striped curtains you probably haven't been lucky finding any, or if you did they were no doubt expensive. Over at a brand new season I found a post that shows how quick and easy it is to make your own striped curtains, and here's how...

 

I've also wanted to try out the iron-on hem product and thought that this would be a great way to experiment. I purchased 3 metres of a plain white, 3 metres of a charcoal grey, and iron-on hemming to make two panels. First, I cut six pieces of material 35cm high, and kept the width of the material as is, for each colour of fabric. This can vary depending on how wide you'd like your stripes of course, but keep in mind the more stripes, the more work...!

 

 

Make sure you measure how long you'd like your curtains to be and use that to judge the width/number of your fabric stripes, also taking into account how much extra material you will need to make each hem.

Following the iron-on hem package instructions, I attached the iron-on tape on the top and bottom edge of each piece of grey material that I had cut. The sides you can leave out for now, because this will be fixed at the end.

After that, I placed the edge of the white fabric over the top of the iron-on tape and ironed each piece together, alternating colours for a total of 6 stripes per panel. Since I did not pre-hem the white material, the white stripe is slightly wider than the grey, which is the look I was going for. If you'd like every stripe to be the same width, make sure you plan accordingly.

Now that you have your material actually looking like a curtain, you need to take care of the sides of the panels. Make sure that you have even edges, and pin so that it makes your life and relationship with your sewing machine much easier. You can also use iron-on hem on the sides, but I chose to sew to add a little dimension with stitching and to make my curtain a little bit stronger.

Once you are finished with both sides, move on to the top and bottom of the curtain. The bottom of mine was finished off with the iron-on hem, but if you'd prefer to sew, go for it! For the top, make sure you add a way to hang the curtain from your rod. I chose to add loops with the extra gray material I had, also called a tab top, or you can do something simple and make a rod pocket.