The Shabby Creek Cottage

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Ruffled curtains: The Tutorial

Last week I showed y’all the reveal of my own little spa, and lots of you commented and emailed (and some even called) me about a tutorial for the curtains. They are really easy.

First you need to determine what size curtain you need for your window. You’ll need a “base” (or a piece that covers the whole curtain), and you’ll need to cut strips for the ruffles.

Determine how many rows of ruffles you want, then measure the length of the curtain and add 2 inches for each ruffle. Divide the number of ruffles by the total inches to figure out how long you want the ruffles. Your ruffle fabric should be 4x the width of the base, so that you have plenty of gathering room. Confusing enough? Welllll… I just eyeballed it. No joke. I’m way too lazy to do all that math (I do have an English degree, after all 🙂

Make sure to add enough to the top of the length to make a pocket rod – then fold it and sew it down before you get to the ruffly part.
Do you have a ruffler? If you do: run it through the ruffler.
If not: ruffle it by hand. By hand is slower, but still works pretty well.
Once your ruffles are ready, overlap the bottom of the base
 fabric by an inch or so and pin it down all the way across.
Sew the ruffle down to the base fabric.
Lay your second set of ruffles down about 2 inches
over the top of the last row, then pin them down.
Now sew that down. Rinse and repeat all the way to the top of the curtain.
I left the top edge of my curtain at the bottom of the hem pocket.
And there you have it! Mine took about 30 minutes because
I used a ruffler, but you could still do it pretty quickly doing it by hand.
how to make ruffled curtains
Thank you for all the sweet comments on my curtains – so glad you liked them 🙂

 

Looking for more curtain ideas? You can find them in my DIY Curtain Ideas Gallery

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Comments

  16. How sweet and adorable! I do custom sewing for the home for a living so I have another way to make those ruffles that might save some time, rather than doing them by hand. If you have a zig zag stitch on your sewing machine… do a zig zag over dental floss. Stitch over and secure the end of it first. When you’re done, just pull the dental floss and you have a ruffle! You can also use a heavy thread like a button thread if you don’t have dental floss on hand 😉

    Michelle
    http://www.jamiesoninteriors.com

    Reply

  18. Great curtains!

    If people are making this and they don’t have a ruffle foot, you can still make gathers by turning your machine so it makes the longest stitches and by loosening the bottom tension. Leave a long end of thread on each end before you sew. Then pull the thread for ruffles. You will have to adjust by hand, but it’s way more time saving than sewing the thread on by hand.

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  33. Thanks so much for the curtain tute! I know it’s an old post, but I wanted this exact look for my little girl’s room, so typed in ruffle curtains on pinterest and low and behold I wound up here and I’m like, “hey, I know her!!” Well okay, so you feel like you “know” someone in blogland when you party with them every week!! 🙂 Here’s how our’s turned out if you’re interested: http://www.kammyskorner.com/2013/02/toris-big-girl-room-reveal-before-and.html

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