A Curtain for the Kitchen

Here was last night's crafting fun! A Roman-style curtain for our one Kitchen window. This project took a little longer than I expected, but the end result didn't turn out too bad. Here are the supplies I needed:

I used red burlap fabric (1 yard, which was more than enough), a white grosgrain ribbon (wide, and an entire spool), my iron and ironing board, scissors, a curtain rod (of the suspension variety, since the window area is a little too tight to hang a real curtain rod), measuring tape, and a roll of Heat N' Bond.

The window is 31 1/2 inches wide, and we didn't need to measure for the full length of the window, since the curtain is decorative, not functional. I figured that I wanted it to go down no more than 12 inches, but because I was doing a Roman-style curtain, I needed to go cut the fabric longer (to compensate for the folds of fabric). The Heat N' Bond is just an easy, no-sew option -- the roll is 3/4 of an inch wide, so because I was hemming the sides of the fabric to hide the raw edges (see below), I doubled that to make 1 1/2 inches on either side. So, if you follow that, the width of the fabric was 34 1/2 inches (window width + left and right sides).

Here, I hemmed around three of the sides of the fabric. For the fourth edge, I estimated how wide the loop needed to be to slide the curtain rod through, and folded that edge over, creating a sort of pocket. Next, I attached two strips of ribbon vertically to the front of the curtains, each about 8 inches from the edges. The Heat N' Bond didn't work out so well here, because when the goop melted to bond the fabrics together, you could see a dark spot under the white ribbon. So, to keep the ribbon from flopping around, I stitched little X's along the ribbon that could easily be hidden when I did the folds. Unfortunately, I'm not so good with remembering to take pictures for each step, so this might sound a little confusing! Next, I loosely folded the fabric in a sort of layered fold to do the "Roman" part of the curtain (see final picture for what this looks like!) and pinned the folds down (because my curtain was so short, it was only 2 folds). I Heat N' Bonded those folds to each other, and stitched along the edges, so they would be secured. Then, with the extra ribbon, I made little bows:

These were stitched onto the ends of the white ribbon that goes vertically along the fabric. And that was it! I slipped the curtain rod into the pocket I'd made earlier, and asked D to pop it into the window frame (I couldn't reach, and at 6'6," he's perfect for reaching things that are too high. He has no problem asking me to get things that are "too low" to make up for it). Here it is:

There are a couple of minor things I'll need to fix on it to make it look better, simply because if I don't I will go crazy, but hurray! We have a curtain in our kitchen now!