curtains for the boy's room...

On a whim, we recently moved our little guy's toddler bed out of his room and the queen-sized bed from our guest room in.  Grayson suddenly had a "big boy room" that needed to be a little more pulled together.  Thank goodness for Pinterest!!

I have an entire board on Pinterest devoted to ideas for my little boy's room.   I wanted his room to be red, white, and blue and have some baseball elements, but with a vintage, pulled-together-over-time look.  Got all that?  Ha! :)

 I bought a navy blue quilt and shams set at Target, had a friend come over and help rearrange the furniture and "art" on the walls, and called it a day.  One of the things that was on the "to do" list was to make some curtains.  Curtains seem to make a room look instantly pulled together and can usually be done inexpensively!   These are the curtains that I kept coming back to and planned to make some similar to this but with red stripes...

                                                                          Source: girlintheredshoes.com via Mary Jo on Pinterest

Fast forward a few weeks and our sweet boy decided that his napping days were over and he began waking up at 6:30am instead of his usual 7-7:30am.  My husband said "Do you think curtains would help?"  The question wasn't even out of his mouth before I started planning the curtains.

I nixed the off-white with red stripes idea in favor of red curtains with white stripes...here's what I came up with:

I came across some twin-sized red flat sheets at Wal-mart for $5 and thought they would be perfect.   I bought 2 red flat sheets (I cut one sheet in half to make 2 panels, so one sheet for each window) and 1 white sheet (for the stripes). If I weren't so cheap needed wider curtains I would have bought the full-sized flat sheets for $10.

I apologize for not taking pictures of the steps...I was too nervous about how they would turn out.  So, I'm going to do my best to explain the steps.  If you have any questions, send me an email!  I'd be happy to answer them!  If you're not interested in the "how to", feel free to skip down to the bottom of the post to check out the rest of the pictures!

While the sheets were in the washing machine/dryer, I tried to plan out the size of my stripes.  The sizes I ended up using were 6 inches at the top, 3 inches in the middle, and 2 inches at the bottom.  The white sheet was a little too thin for my liking, so I decided to use a double thickness for each stripe.  So for each stripe, I double the measurement and added 1/2 inch (for a seam allowance).  For the top stripe, I cut a piece of sheet that was 13 1/2 inches x the width of the sheet.  I simply ironed that piece in half horizontally, sewed raw edges together, and then turned it inside out...basically creating a giant tube.  I ironed it well (the iron is totally your best friend on this project) and then ironed a strip of Heat N' Bond to the top of the stripe.  This helped a TON when it came to attaching the stripes.  It held the stripes in place until I could secure them with my sewing machine.

Once all of the stripes were ironed, I decided on the placement of the stripes.  My stripes start 6 inches from the top and have 1 inch in between stripes.  I peeled the paper off the back of the Heat N' Bond and ironed it in place...being very careful to keep the stripes straight.  I used my acrylic ruler as I was ironing to keep everything lined up.

I ironed the top stripe on, the sewed it down on both the top and bottom of the stripe.  Follow the same steps for the second and third stripe.  Here's a closer view of the stripes:

Now that all of my stripes were sewed, I cut the curtain in half to make 2 panels.  It was SO much easier for me to cut them in half after the stripes were lined up...then I knew for sure that both of my panels would "match" when the curtains were pulled shut.  

If you have thick enough sheets, you could hem up the edges and be done!  I decided to line these curtains to help give them more stability and hopefully give us another hour of sleep by blocking that pesky light!  I followed the awesome tutorial by Miss Mustard Seed found here.

Grayson's curtains are hung by ring clips because he's a 3 1/2 year old boy.  I had visions of him playing Spiderman and climbing the curtains...so ring clips it was.

This project took about 2 1/2 hours total and cost about  $35 (including the sheets and curtain rods...I already had the curtain lining and ring clips on hand).  Totally worth another hour of sleep in the morning and a few nap times a week!

In the interest of full disclosure, I had planned on hemming the curtains after they were hung and I had a chance to see how much they needed to be taken up.  They have been hanging up for a week and a half and that hasn't happened.  Seeing as 3 curtains are hiding behind furniture, I doubt it will happen anytime soon! :)

This was the first set of lined curtains I have made...if I can do it, you can do it!

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