A Little Privacy (With a Curtain) Please!

I don't currently own a sewing machine, so I'm a pretty big fan of 'no sew' tape. I first learned how easy it is to hem curtains with 'no sew' tape from YoungHouseLove.com . 

If you are a fan of this blog, you already know that John and Sherry recently announced that they will be permanently stepping away from their blog of 4 years to pursue other careers. Sad for readers, but wonderful for their family. For this project, I decided to channel my inner Sherry. 

In my last two apartments, the front door has had a pane on glass looking out into the foyer. Which makes for a pretty door, but doesn't offer a whole lot of privacy. 

I thought about purchasing a curtain and just hemming it to the correct dimensions, but curtains can be pretty expensive and I knew I wanted something light to contrast the darkly stained woodwork. I purchased some white fabric from Joann Fabrics a while back and had just enough to make a new curtain for this window. 

Here are the steps I took:

First, I measured the dimensions of the window so that I knew how wide and long the curtain needed to be. There's nothing worse than going through all of the work only to find that the darn thing is too short. Believe me, it happened with a panel of curtains I hemmed a while back. Ugh!

Taking one side, I evenly folded over the edge of the fabric TWICE. You want the raw edge to go under the nice, new edge that will be exposed. I like to iron my folds to make sure I'm creating straight lines with the fabric. The hems can be any width you want. I usually go with 1-1.5 inches on the sides, and 3 inches for the top and bottom hem. Note that you don't want to close up the top hem entirely since you will be pushing a curtain rod through it!

Then I took a strip of 'no sew' tape and cut it to the desired length. I like to work with shorter sections so that I can be more precise, otherwise I find that the fabric puckers.

Next, I placed the strip under my second fold, treating it like a fabric sandwich, and ironed with a HOT iron. I let the heat of the iron rest and sink into the fabric/tape (glue). More of a 'pick up, and press' sort of motion. 

Once I had 'no sew' taped all of my edges, I was ready for hanging (a small rod and bracket had already been installed by the previous renters - yay!).

And... tah-dah! Much better don't you think?

P.S. I hemmed all of the curtains in the apartment the same way. I measured how many inches needed to come off, folded the fabric under, and 'no sew' taped to create a new hem. Time intensive, but easy peasy.

~ Alicia