How to Use Drapery Weights

If you like to do home dec projects, particularly draperies and valances, then I want to turn you onto a little notion called a drapery weight. You can buy these in any fabric store, they're in the home dec department over where curtain things are. And it's a little fabric pouch with a piece of metal in it. In this case, it's zinc. And the fabric, it's very easy to sew in. You're going to add this weight at the bottom hem edge of either your valance or your drapery to give just a little more weight and body to the drape. And what happens is it keeps the drapery or the valance from curling in and it helps it hang straight. They only cost a couple of dollars. There's four to a package, so you've got enough for a pair of drapes or the valance, but it is well worth every penny. So, let me show you a real easy way to apply this weight. I'm going to use a green thread, just so you can see what I'm doing. And in this case, the trick is I wanna go with more thread and I'm going to quadruple it because I don't wanna sew a whole bunch of times. So, I've found that if I double my thread when I thread the needle, and then come back through, now, I've got four threads in here, okay? Before I knot it, I definitely wanna run it through beeswax. Beeswax is a godsend for hand sewing because it makes it that your thread is stronger, it won't break as easily, and it keeps it from twisting. So, you just pull it through the beeswax and get a good coating of wax on your thread. It's a tailor's trick, tailors do beeswax quite a bit. Then, go ahead and make your knot at the end. All right, I like to do a mitered corner at the bottom of my valances and draperies. A lot of people just square it off, if that's the case, then you would put it right at the very, very bottom. But because I do that mitering trick, I've gotta move this up just a little bit. So, I tend to go in there and figure out exactly where it's gonna be, kind of peel this back a little bit. And you wanna do it on the side that isn't facing out. So, I do it on the facing side. Okay. I'm using an embroidery needle so I could thread it just a little bit easier here on the camera, but you definitely would want to use a regular sharp needle. You don't have to go crazy with this. It's not like it's gonna get a lot of wear and tear. The only problem when you're using the quadruple thread is, even with the beeswax, sometimes it will tend to knot up. But for the most part, it doesn't if you're careful. There we go, there we go. And with the beeswax, I can pull on it a little bit more. If you want, you can sew all across the whole edge of it, but you really don't need to. The goal here is to just kind of go over the same stitches so you don't have a lot of thread showing there. And if this was done with matching thread, you probably wouldn't see it. But that's about three times through, that should hold it. You can go ahead and tie it off. And now, it's stitched onto the facing part of your drapery. You're going to gently fold it back in, tuck it up. And now, all I have to do, see, it's in that little pocket there, I just need to come back and I can either hand stitch all of this or I can just do a single tack there, actually, in matching thread and my draperies are done. And now, you can see how it does give that extra weight to the drapery and it just hangs nice as can be. So, get yourself some drapery weights and you'll be amazed at the difference.