Adjusting our sail: Using old curtains and burlap to make adorable new curtains

Toddlers and Infants, Infants and Toddlers. Thats pretty much all I have experienced in the last 4 weeks since our beautiful daughter was born. The most exciting thing I have done this week (aside from watching our little girl learn to roll over!!!) is drive to pick up diapers. In my defense, they are cloth diapers and we got a great deal, but still.. It is kind of sad. My husband does his best to entertain me while he's home, but we just moved into a 100+ year old lake home and the workload to fixing it up and getting ready for winter is IN-SANE.

Today I had big plans to go do something fun out in nature, so naturally I am at home watching my little girl sleep and my sweet son play with blocks while it pours rain outside. I need a project.

There is always Pinterest... or learning a new skill... or doing my to do list that has been sitting on my desk for 2 months (untouched because to do lists suck). No, no, instead I will do something completely unnecessary, like making different curtains out of curtains we already have. Completely makes since, right? Right.

So here is the story: Like I mentioned earlier, we just moved into a new home. This "new" home is one that has been in my family since my great grandparents. It usually sits empty 80% of the year. I just graduated college (woohoo!) and was 6 months pregnant and we decided I should be at home with the little babe for atlas 6 months after she was born so we needed a less expensive place to live. Here we are. It's amazing and SO beautiful. We absolutely love it...

BUT...

It was, to be frank, a complete unorganized mess when we moved in. It was a summer home shared by my entire family. It had become something of a storage place for people who graduated college or moved out of state (or the country) and needed to store things. The town it's in is also in a fantastic spot for garage/yard sales, which are imposable to pass up. needless to say, it has quite the array of different fabrics and random trinkets. This home has lots of character, and i love it, but i don't do well with mismatched anything. Ten years ago, the kitchen was torn off and replaced by an absolutely gorgeous one. Although sometimes I miss the color spectrum speckled linoleum of my childhood, I am SO glad we have the current kitchen. I mention this because of the curtains. The curtains that live in the current kitchen also lived in the old kitchen. I admit, they are cute, but if you have ever moved into a new home you will know that no windows are created equal (especially new windows vs 100 year old windows) and that your old curtains almost never fit on the new windows. This is the case here at the lake. It really isn't a BIG deal but it drives me crazy! Blame it on the pregnancy and breastfeeding hormones.

My solution:
Burlap, scissors, the old curtains and a sewing machine

I loved the apple theme... its actually what we had in the kitchen we had before we moved here also. I decided to use pieces of the old apple themed curtains for the new curtains.

The theme of how I fixed all of the curtains is pretty similar across the board but the pictures are from the largest window. I love the results!

Here we go:

this is what we started with:

First, I cut off 5 inches (not including the loops) of the original curtain.

Next, I cut my burlap. I used burlap in a big roll from the garden section of Lowes. I'm sure you could find a similar item at any hardware store or gardening center.

I used the original curtain as my measuring tool. I cut the burlap twice the width of the original curtain. When working with burlap I usually give myself an extra inch since you typically lose a little when you are working with it.

This is important

in order to cut burlap strait, there is a trick:

Cut a small part where you want to cut.

Take a string right next to your cut and pull it all of the way out

Now you have a clear area where you need to cut.

Cut down the middle of that.

Now you have a perfectly cut burlap. Easy peasy!

Next, I had to make my burlap the right length. I made sure that the end that was already "finished" was at the bottom and I, again, used the original curtain as my measurement. I made it the same length as the amount I had cut off of the original curtain (plus an inch). cut the same way as above.

After you have your burlap cut, you have to sew up the sides so it doesn't unravel.

I use a zig sag stitch that is as long and wide as I can set it on my machine.

I use one of the burlap strings as my guide to keeping it strait. The string I use as a guide will be loose and come off in the end. I keep it at the edge of my foot the entire time I am zig zagging the stitch. This keeps the stitch perfectly strait all of the way down.

Do that to all THREE sides (remember the bottom has the already finished bottom on it).

Once that is finished you can attach it to your cut from the original curtain. You need to pin the right sides together. There are many ways to do this. I choose to do it the pleat style.

To do the pleat style I start by folding one side over then folding it again over on itself...

It makes a nice pleat. You need to evenly space the pleats across the whole curtain. I used trial an error with the first curtain, which took way too long. The second curtain I pined the middle of the curtain clip to the middle of the burlap and it made it easier to see how to space them. It ended up being a pleat every inch and a half and then a inch and a half gap all of the way across. This spacing worked for all of the curtains. you could always do larger pleats with larger gap or smaller with smaller gap, it is completely up to you!