Well before we started our kitchen
redo…
We were stuck in a rut. Same window covers, same dirty carpet, same kitchen, same everything except for paint as the day we moved into our house. I am the type of person that needs and craves change be it little or big. Usually its as simple as moving some furniture around. This time, I have the craving for a change in curtains. Every time I opened and closed the curtain, the rope you had to pull on would hurt my hand. They were also white, not a good color for a family with young kids and a dog. It was also bright when we wanted it dark. To curb the curtain craving, I researched different ways to make blackout curtains. It came to my attention that making them from a new store-bought piece of fabric would actually be more expensive than buying already made curtains and fixing them up so they hung the way I wanted them to. After a trip to Walmart I had enough curtain rods and curtains to cover a very large window, a sliding door/window, and a medium sized bedroom room window. I also bought a product called snap grommets.
The grommets come with a little tool for you to draw the middle and the circle on your fabric so you can cut out the right sized hole for the grommet. I know its hard to see, but that's what I did in this picture. Right in the middle is a little "x" with the circle around it. Unfortunately the grommets didn't come with an easy way to get the hole started. For this I used a butcher knife, cut into the center, then used my fabric scissors to cut the hole. Although it worked really well I didn't take any pictures of this. I just couldn't figure out how to maneuver a butcher knife, fabric, and a camera at the same time. =) Make sure that before you jump into this, you measure out where you want the grommets placed.
The hole is cut.
It is called snap grommet for a reason, all you do is put it both sides on and press together. Very easy and simple.
Trial run. When I took the curtains out of the package they were obviously creased from being shoved in a tiny little package. After I made sure it look alright I tossed them (snap grommets and all) in the dryer with a damp towel.
And, tada they were done. Bad lighting, sorry. My college lighting teacher would be super frustrated with this and most of the pictures I post on here. Sorry professor.
Because the store bought windows did not meet the window measurements, they were too long and not wide enough, I bought three, cut one in half, and sewed the whole ones to the halves as well as shortened them. If you look closely in the picture below on the right and left sides of the curtain you can see where I sewed the halves to the wholes so it would open in the middle.
Super easy and totally changed the look in our house. The perfect amount of change for the moment. (Little did I know that the kitchen project would be very very soon at that moment!)
