Finished: Anthropologie-Inspired Curtains

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I made curtains. This is a big deal for me. I can't actually remember the last time I had curtains in a room in my house, including my bedroom. I suppose the last time I had curtains was in high school, except it was actually a shower curtain. (That counts, right?) Which means I've been curtainless for almost 10 years. More if you don't count my shower curtain.

I interrupt this post for a gratuitous kitten picture.

Obviously, curtains never seemed important to me. More like something you hang to make your house feel like a home. And since I moved almost every semester in college, and almost once a year after college, why bother getting comfortable?

In my nomadic mind, I still want to move, but I have decided to put down some roots at my current apartment. And that means making curtains.

I saw this amazing tutorial from Besserina for some beautiful Anthropologie inspired curtains. She goes in to amazing detail for getting them perfect, and I did my own take on it (to an extent - it's still mostly her!).

The kitchen/living room in our house has sort of a fall look to it. Some rusty oranges and reds. Green is the perfect complementary color. Because we have radiators that get really hot underneath our kitchen windows, I wanted to have short curtain panels. I'm not sure what the actual risk of fire actually is, but I'd like to avoid that if I can.

I looped the fabric around a bathroom suspension bar (curtain rods are too much work) and cut off the fabric where it hit the window sill. Then I created 2 strips of pleats per panel. And guys, that is so much work. I didn't even measure out the pleats - I just eyeballed it and folded - and still. Wow.

And then, you know, you're supposed to go through with an iron and destroy all the hard work you put into your pleats. But don't think about that. It's worth it.

I folded the last scraps of fabric over to create loops to pin the curtains back.

I added the pleats to the panels with a decorative stitch. I originally wanted to do a decorative stitch around the entire curtain panel, but I forgot that was the plan until I was halfway through. And even though they're short panels, it's still a lot of fabric and it just didn't seem worth it to go back and undo all of my hard work. (Plus, I'm pretty lazy.)

Doesn't the stitch look pretty? (And almost not worth it since you can hardly see it??)

So yes! After a few weeks and using up exactly all 4 yards of my fabric, I have curtains in one room of my apartment! I feel like such an adult.

Total cost for 2 windows: $20
(Versus $168 at Anthropologie - and I like mine a lot better!)