How To Customize and Add Length to Ready-made Curtains

Ready-made curtain panels can easily be purchased at most stores. They are an inexpensive way to help complete a room’s look. However, many ready-made curtains come in standard lengths, which don’t always work in your home. Adding a fabric to any curtain panel will not only add length to the panel, but will also add your own personal touch to them. Select a contrasting or coordinating fabric, solid or patterned, to go with the curtain panels you already have and help achieve the look you want and create your own custom curtains!

Materials Needed: Store bought curtain panels, fabric of your choice, fusible fabric iron on, scissors, yardstick, iron, and curtain hardware

1. Before you get started, measure where your current curtain panels hang and then measure how much additional fabric you will need to add in order for them to just skim the floor. Typically, curtains should be mounted about halfway between the top of the window frame and the ceiling. However, with higher ceilings measure the distance above the window frame to the ceiling and then mount the curtains about 1/3 of that distance.

2. Shop for your fabric! The fabric can be added to either the top or the bottom of your existing panels. The directions given are for adding fabric to the bottom of the panels. As a rule of thumb, the darker fabric should be at the bottom to keep the curtains visually balanced.

3. Lay out your ready-made panels flat and then lay your selected fabric over these panels so that you can copy the width. Add a couple of inches at each edge so that you can fold over for a nice seam. Measure and cut the desired length as well, also leaving a few inches to fold over.

4. Place a strip of the fusible iron about an inch from the edge of the selected fabric, fold over about a half-inch of fabric, and iron the fabric together to create a hem. Do this all the way down each side of the fabric length-wise only.

5. Once the length of both sides of the fabric has been hemmed, position the panel onto the ready-made panel with about an inch of overlap. Once positioned, place your strip of iron-on between the fabrics and iron for about 10 seconds on each strip until you’ve adhered all of the fabric to the panel.

6. Once the fabric has been ironed onto the panel you should have a couple inches of fabric left over on each side. Cut off additional fabric on the ends so that about one inch remains

7. Again, lay down a strip of iron on fusible tape about an inch from the edge of the fabric, fold the edge over, and then iron to fuse fabric together. Do this on both ends and this will finalize all hemming.

8. Attach your new longer curtain panels to the curtain hardware and enjoy your custom curtains!

DIY Storage Boxes: Decorative and Functional!

Here's an easy craft that puts the FUN back into functional: Decorative storage boxes! Fact: we all need storage... and we all have things that we need to keep accessible but that we don't necessarily want visible.

For me, this is receipts. In our budget conscious time, my husband and I save our receipts so that we can go through them at the end of the month to make sure we didn't go off track. Rather than keeping a messy stack of receipts or hiding them somewhere that was inconvenient (meaning that my husband's receipts would never make it there), I decided that I needed to create an easy and accessible place to put them when we come in the door.

Spending money on something to camouflage my messy reciepts seemed counter-productive, so I decided to create something from what I had at home! Follow these steps and you too can have pretty little boxes to hide your mess...

1. Find a box to use that will be large enough for whatever your need to hide. I always save old gift boxes for wrapping presents later, so I raided my gift box storage and found a great box with a gold lid. Perfect!

2. Gather your other supplies:

• Material to cover your box (this could be paper or fabric... in my case I used fabric so these instructions will refer to this material),
• Glue that is appropriate for your material (paper glue for paper, or fabric glue for fabric...)
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Mod Podge (If you are using fabric to cover your box you'll need this craft glue because it dries clear and smooth... super for sealing things like fabric edges to keep them from fraying!)
• Brush for applying the above

3. Measure the height of your box. Add 2" to that amount so that you'll have enough to wrap inside the top and over the bottom.

4. Measure the lengths of all 4 sides of your box and add those amounts together. Add at least 1" more to make sure you have enough to wrap around all the sides of the box.

5. Use your measurements above to measure and cut a long strip of fabric that will cover your box. Hold an edge of the fabric up to a corner of the box and wrap it all the way around the sides to make sure you cut enough. Now you're ready to go!

6. Cover one side of the box with your glue and smooth your fabric over the side. Be sure to keep it straight if you are working with a pattern!

*TIP* In my case I used tacky glue, and a little trick about tacky glue is that it is best if you apply it first and then let it sit for about a minute before adhering the other material to it. It actually does get tacky and will hold better if you do this!

7. Continue around each side until you reach the corner you started with. Now your box's sides are all covered!

... Try to line up the pattern of the fabric if you can and cut off the excess fabric, then glue down that edge.

8. Cut slits in your fabric where it sticks up at the box's corners. These slits make it easy for you to fold the fabric over the top edge of the box.

... Glue the fabric down along each of the sides on the inside of the box.

9. Turn the box over and again cut slits in the fabric at each corner so that you can fold the fabric flat along the bottom of the box.

*TIP* The folded fabric can make the bottom corners of the box bulky which can make the finished box sit cockeyed. To avoid this, you can cut the edges of the fabric at an angle to remove excess fabric and make the finished box sit evenly.

10. Brush on your Mod Podge (or another clear drying glue) along the fabric edges on the inside of the box, the fabric edges at the bottom of the box, and the fabric edge along corner of the box where your fabric met itself. This glue will seal the edges of the fabric to keep them from fraying.

Ta-da! A beautiful place to stash my receipts...

Now it's you're turn. Happy crafting!

xoxo,

Ellenor