Another easy DIY... Lined Curtain Panels

Several years ago I happened to catch Ballard Designs when they were going through their frequent store inventory changes. I got a steal of a deal on an adorable upholstered cube ottoman that has since lived in nearly room in our house for a brief period in time. The fabric on the ottoman has such a great mix of khaki, caramel, and gray that it truly can work anywhere! When we bought it, my mom happened to ask if there was any fabric available to purchase to make pillows, etc with. After a quick check, the sales lady appeared with 2 huge pieces of fabric measuring about 50x108 inches each. It had been used a a fabric backdrop in the store and since there was no price on it and the fabric was being discontinued they sold us both pieces for almost nothing (honestly it has been so long that I can't remember exactly how cheap but I know it was much less than the $38 per yard that I found it listed for at Calico Corners below)

The drape fabric

In typical 'me' fashion, the fabric has sat unused since its purchase! Until one day a few months ago when I had the idea to see if it would work as drapes in the nook area of our kitchen which is open to our family room (and where the ottoman has been living for several months now!) I had an extra set of Ikea drapery clips so I simply ironed the fabric, folded over a quick hem along the top and clipped the drapes onto our curtain rod. The pattern looked great and best of all the drapes were long enough!

Well, we lived with these make shift drapes for a bit and I really loved how they looked but we get a lot of sun thru these doors so I realized pretty quickly that I would need to line them to make them work. I happened upon a white king sized flat sheet on clearance at Target and knew this would be perfect to line them with.

It was actually much easier than I expected.... My sewing machine (and Internet) have been on the fritz so I opted to use Stitch Witchery. I actually think sewing would have been much faster but I was on a roll and really wanted to get these finished.

1. My fabric panels happened to be the same length and width so this made the process pretty easy to start with. Once I measured the fabric, I cut my king size sheet in half to make the lining. Yeah - I did not have a big enough space so I used the floor!

2. Quick iron of both the fabric and the lining.

3. I then ironed down a 1 inch hem on the top and sides of each of the fabric panels. I started out doing the hem with Stitch Witchery to hold the hems but about half way thru I opted to stop and just iron the hem down since I would be actually attaching it in a few steps.

4. Starting on one side of the panel, I laid out the fabric pattern down placed the lining on top so that the lining was just touching the ironed down hem.

5. I then folded over the fabric to make another 1 inch hem that now overlapped the lining and ironed it all down. Then I placed the no sew tape between the lining and newly ironed hem and did another round of ironing. This is where I think that sewing would have been much faster, since my fabric was sort of heavy and adding the lining meant that I had to really work with the iron to make the tape stick and the hem hold.

6. Repeat step 5 on the opposite side of the panel, and them on the top. Once the 3 sides we're completed I laid the almost complete panel on the floor and measured what length I needed. For me, I needed 92 inches since I was using the curtain clips. I marked 92 inches across the bottom of my panels and got started on repeating step 5 at the bottom. I actually ended up with closer to a 2 inch hem on the bottom.

7. Repeat steps 4-6 on the next panel.

All in all, I got the project finished in less than 3 hours and I think that a big chunk of the time was spent ironing and re-ironing to get the stupid no sew tape to stick. The worst part is that I will no doubt need to sew these at some point since we heavily use these curtains. But at least they are up look nice for now!

Final look from a distance and no sun peaking thru!