Sew Last Minute

On Christmas Eve’s Eve, Joe and I were prepping the apartment to host my family for dinner.  While Joe was in the kitchen making the sauce for our red sauce with clams and mussels, I was sewing curtains.

I wish I was kidding, but that was one of the projects I tackled before hosting our first adult dinner.  You know the kind of dinner – it’s the one you bust out the fancy china for.  It was a terrific plan, if I do say so myself.

On an IKEA trip that feels forever ago, I grabbed a yard of their Sofia fabric (in green).  The game plan was to use it for pillows in the bedroom… which clearly never happened.  That means, it was just sitting in a basket with other fabric, just waiting to be used.  After about 3 months, it was clear that the pillows just weren’t going to happen so I thought about what else I could use it for.

Coincidentally, this was also around the time I got annoyed with the kitchen curtains.  Not only were the curtains the wrong size for the window (ironically, they weren’t wide enough), they were getting partially bleached by the sun.  This window gets a lot of sun during the day so I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t exactly happy either.

The week before Christmas, I thought “Hey, I should use that green-striped fabric for curtains in the kitchen.  They’ll be perfect!”.  Of course, the week before Christmas was a regular work week so between cleaning, decorating, and figuring out our menu, there wasn’t a whole lot of free time to sew.  Hence my Christmas Eve Eve sewing.

Totally worth it though – I love how they turned out, and those stripes definitely helped me make sure everything was straight.

And now, for their close up because I love them…

These aren’t perfect (I have to trim each side) but I love the way they look and their pop of color.  The green was ideal for a Christmas Eve dinner but they’ll also work throughout the year, which is great.

With that said, I thought I would create a little tutorial in case anyone else was interested in DIYing a set of curtains like these.

All of the red lines are where you should sew, and the blue is where you should fold.

Step 1: Fold and sew the seams on the sides and the bottom.
Step 2: Decide how large of a fold you want and fold.
Step 3: Sew small lines on the sides and in the middle.
Steps 4 – 7: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you have the desired amount of folds.
Step 8: When you’re done with the folds, sew the top seam, but be sure to leave enough room for whatever curtain rod you will be using.

Anyone else out there wait until the last-minute to tackle a project?  Have you made any recent updates to your home’s decor?