Simple Sew Curtains

You want to know why I'm insane? It's because I got a crazy itch last month (I think it was truly one month ago) that we needed to paint our family room/kitchen. I've wanted to paint it for a while, but suddenly Sherwin Williams was having a paint sale and I knew it was my chance. I bought the paint and my husband and I stayed up till 3 am getting the first coat on. It was ridiculous. We finished painting that weekend, but it is taking me FOREVER to get my house put back together. The holidays are just making it harder-- instead of putting things in their proper place, they are getting shoved into cupboards to make room for Christmas decorations. It is such a mess.

Anyway, this post is actually about my new curtains. Here's what I didn't like about my old curtains:

1. They were silk and I couldn't wash them. I have little ones with messy hands in my kitchen, so I need to be able to throw my curtains in the wash.

2. The rod was low and looked kind of stoopy. (Sorry I don't have a photo, just trust me on this.)

So when I got a chance to do new curtains, I knew the things I needed to change. Washable fabric, hang the rod higher. Simple. Now, according to the Nester, all you have to do is hang your fabric to your rod with clips and you're done. I've done that in other rooms and it's turned out great. But, I knew I would be washing these curtains, so I washed my fabric first.

Look what happened.....

 See how it shrunk 4 inches? This was a problem.
Also, this...

 Super frayed edges from the wash/dry cycle.

No big deal. I just double folded my fabric to create a hem at the top. And, I came up with this neat trick-- I wanted to make sure that all my seams were the same size since they would be incredibly visible up there on my wall. I know that there are nifty tools called seam guides that measure you seams for you, but I don't own one. And, since I only do my craft projects in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep, I couldn't just run out and get one. So, I cut a peice of cardstock to be the exact length I wanted my seam to be, and I used it as a guide for the entire project. This way, all my seams are the same. Is that brilliant or what?

 Here's a finished hem hanging from the rod. Much better.

Now, how to fix my too-short curtain issue? I didn't want to have a bunch of seams down there, so I just bought one long peice of fabric, cut it, folded it in half, and sewed it to the main curtain. Since my curtains were 4 inches too short, I cut the fabric to be 8 inches long so that when I folded it in half it would be the 4 inches I needed.
This really looks awesome. The seam is barely noticeable from the front view. Plus, the extra fabric down there gives the curtains some weight, which helps them to hang better. Woot!

Finished product:

Holy flip it is impossible to take a decent photo of a window. The camera picks up all the natural light and makes everything else so dark. But you get the idea.