We have only blinds as window treatments in our apartment. We also only have a few windows. In our bedroom we have a window right over our bed. I decided that I would make a window treatment. Ok, I'm taking a sewing class and we had to make a window treatment and I decided to do one for our bedroom. I didn't want something heavy or dark and it's also quite near the end of the semester so I didn't want to make a large project for myself. I decided to go with sheer fabric and go from there. Good thing my mom lives a whole heck of a lot closer to a JoAnn fabric store than me and found some grey fabric for me so I don't really know how much this project cost. But anyways.
I measured the rod above my window which is a decorative rod (it had knobs at the end, nothing fancy but prettier than a plain rod. From end to end (not measuring the decorative knobs) it was 70 inches. Big guy. So I knew that the middle measurement needed to be 70 inches. I then measured how long I wanted my tails to be. 53-55 inches looked good. I had 6 yards to work with. I measured 55 inches with room to spare and pinned it. Then I measured the 70 inches and pinned it as well.
Here's where the work starts! Now, at the bottom of the pins, I measured 12 inches away from the middle panel. This measurement can be adjusted to anything you want depending on how deep of a swag you want. I had no idea what I was doing so I just went for 12 inches. It made a deeper swag that I thought but I was ok with it. I then put my tape measure (a ruler would've been better) and marked where the angle went.
Then I gathered every four inches making sure the markings lined up straight, not angled. I just pinned this into our rug (made sure not to scratch our floors!) I used a lot of pins. Other methods are probably better but I didn't do that...
After all the gathering was done I stitched it by hand. Now...when you are doing the other side...make sure you fold it (accordion style) the same direction as your other side or it will twist. That is exactly what happened when I held my curtain up. I had to fold the sewn fold in half towards the front on one side and towards the back on the other side so the swag would fall right and someone had to hold it for me and blah blah blah. Wayward.
Then I serged my edges doing a rolled serged edge. It would've also been smarter to do that in the beginning but alas, I didn't do that either. So the tails. I just lined them up together and cut them even to each other so it will hang sort of at an angle at the bottom. If you want it to be a straight edge then you take the shortest edge and line it up 45 degrees to the selvedge (making it so the cut edge meets the selvege in a triangle) then mark and cut and you'll get a straight tail. But I got it done anyways! Well, I had to turn it in for a grade and don't have it back yet so I don't have a picture of the finished product. I will be sure to put in a post once I get it back though! It was super easy once I got the hang of it. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to angle it and make a trapezoid to make it swag.
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