DIY Bedsheet Curtains

I'm happy to report that I'm completed my second sewing project. I'm on a (very slow) roll! I made curtains for our flex room/in-law suite/play room a couple of weeks ago, but I've been having some brain injury issues that have kept me from getting the post up. Lucky for you, I take lots of pictures, so I think I remember how I did it!

I've seen bedsheet curtains on Pinterest over the last year or so I've been on the site, but never pinned them because I assumed they involved sewing, which scared me off. But now I'm facing my fear of the sewing machine. Niels and I were watching TV shortly after we set up the new-and-improved flex room. I had a set of sheets that I bought for the curtains in the dining room, but there was only one set, and we needed two for that huge window. (I'll blog about that adventure eventually!). The window in the flex room is small and since it has the same Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay paint, I knew the colors would match perfectly. So I used my little trick to hang it up. 

First, I looked for the top of the sheet, that would normally go by the pillows. The seam is a little thicker than the rest of the sheet.

Next, I used a seam ripper to loosen the seam on the side. It's sort of folded together. I did this on both sides, so my tension rod could slide all the way through the wide seam at the top of the sheet. 

Insert the rod through one end and pull it all the way through.

Voila! One curtain ready to hang.

With our ICF walls, our window sills are really thick, so we hang most of the curtains inside the sills with a tension rod. If you like the long look, you're done! I'm not a fan of the drag-on-the-floor look, so I had a bit more work to do. 

First, I flipped the curtain around so the finished side was facing outside. I pulled out the curtain a bit so you can see how long the sheet really was. 

Next, I pinned where I thought the curtain length I wanted. Looking at this photo, it looks like it should hang to just above the floor. I'm definitely a novice because that's not what happened. But this step will benefit those who are more skilled than me!

 

After that first pin, I decided to take the curtain down to measure the rest. My European husband has taught me to embrace the metric system when measuring because I'm less likely to get thrown off by fractions.

Based on my measurements, I folded over 47cm of fabric and started pinning, measuring every few pins to make sure I was pinning straight.

I also pinned at the bottom. 

Our little engineer did not clean up before he went to bed, so I used his tracks as weights.

And I used his trains to pick up pins when I spilled the box. 

I started this project at 10pm and it took me about 30 minutes to pin.

I pulled out my sewing machine and set up on the baking center because I couldn't find the extension cord I need to sew at the dining room table. It's actually a nice little work space. Note to self: if you are going to have photos taken of yourself for the blog, make sure that it's a day that you have showered. Oops. 

 

I had some technical difficulties getting started. I was quite proud of myself for figuring out that I had threaded the bobbin incorrectly. 

 

Once I had thread coming from the spool and the bobbin, I sewed my seam in no time.

 

I was feeling pretty proud of myself at this point. (If you look behind me, you can see the sheets that we put up in our dining room. They still need to be hemmed...)

 

All I had to do now is cut off the excess fabric. So I laid the curtain on the ground, and then flipped the extra piece over so that I could cut close to the new seam. 

I cut off the extra fabric maybe 1/2 inche from the new seam.

I like the pattern of this fabric so much that I'm keeping the scrap for something. 

Finally, I re-inserted the rod and hung up my curtain, which was still a little longer that I had planned, but much improved.

So, two projects in, I'm still very much a novice sewer, but I'm gaining confidence. One step that I missed is checking the length of the hem by hanging up the curtain after pinning it. I'll have a couple opportunities to do that when I hem the dining room and powder room curtains.

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