DIY Striped Curtains

So we've seen these all over the blog world and I guess I figured it was my turn to give it a go.  I found these curtains at Tar-jay for about $14!  I was originally planning on using ones from IKEA but the Tar-jay ones ended up being less expensive.

You can order them online here.  You're welcome Target.

When it comes to having perfectly straight lines I always get nervous and call in the Hubs for help.  I also referred to these 2 great tutorials:

Dwellings By DeVore

Reckless Glamour

Home Depot had their gallon size Martha Stewart paint on sale for $12 so I picked up a gallon along with some "textile medium" that I found at a local craft store.  I wanted to be able to wash these curtains if need be since they would be in a nursery of a boy (aka probably always going to be dirty).

Since I used the same exact curtains as Reckless Glamour it made life super easy since she already did the measurements ( I HATE math).

It was super easy (just time consuming) to tape off the stripes...until I got to the bottom and one side had less of a stripe than the other.  I called in reinforcements (aka Hubs).  I almost had a breakdown until my phone rang and I chatted for a while with a friend and then by the time I was done Hubs had fixed it all!  I just love him! 

He said that it wasn't really my error that the curtains were sewn wrong...not sure if this is completely true but it made me feel a little better.

While we were working on these it was pretty darn cold so I didn't want to paint these outside and risk the paint freezing before it had time to dry.  We laid down a bunch of cardboard and laid the panels on top of that. 

 

Then i went to work painting away with a small foam roller.  

Here they are in all their orange glory!

Curtain Rods GALORE!

A few weekends ago Hubs and I met some friends at our favorite breakfast spot and after gorging ourselves eating we decided to head over to Lowes for some scrap wall paper I needed for a project.  While we were wandering aimlessly trying to find the wall paper we stumbled upon a sale rack of curtain rods.  There was a only a few there but then we discovered a sign that led us to aisle 15.  It was like a light from up above was shining down on aisle 15.  It was magnificint.  There at the end of the aisle was all the curtain rods you could ever want.  Even though we didn't exactly budget for that this month we decided that this would be the most cost effective way to finish buying curtain rods for the house.  We are talking $40 and $60 rods for $9 people!!!  Needless to say I never did get my wall paper but we walked outta there with 4 rods, 2 fenials and brackets for around $60!!!

Here is the progress of the rods being hung so far:

Rod for the nursery.

Rod for the bonus room.

Mercury glass rod for in the kitchen.  Please ignore the wall patching...we're workin' on that...

Similar to the rod we bought for the living room.  We also bought fenials for the ends, brackets, and rings.  We haven't hung this one yet because we are waiting until we get the curtains to make sure the measurements will be correct.

Now it might be a little while until they have curtains hanging from them but at least this part is finished!

Master Bath Curtains

Remember this fabric I bought on clearance at The Depot a while back?  I FINALLY put it to use.

I used it in our master bathroom to make curtains.  These are the first DIY curtains I've ever done.  I completed the project prior to getting my new sewing machine so I took the "no sew" route of using Stitch Witchery.

You can usually find it in your local fabric or craft store.  It's quite inexpensive for how much you get.  All you do is go ahead and cut your fabric and then you use the Stitch Witchery to bond the edges together.  I took an old damp cloth and put it between my fabric and iron and went to town.  It actually took quite a while, but that could have been because I had the TV on :)  You don't do a back and forth motion with the iron, just press it on there until you feel like it has bonded.  Easy, but time consuming.  May the force be with you.

 

For some reason Kohl's decided to mail us 2 free $10 gift cards so I used them to buy the clip rings to hold up the panels.

The fabric is nice and thick so we can close the curtains if we don't want any light to shine through but we usually leave them hanging the way the are in the below photo. 

Only a few more small tweaks and then the master bath will be finished!