Learn How to Sew Lined Curtains

A hot trend in home decorating today is the panel drapery with grommet tops. And these draperies look very similar to shower curtains. Today I'd like to show you how easy they are to make and you really can accomplish it in an afternoon or an evening. I'm using this fabric here today and it is a decorator fabric. Decorator fabrics vary from our traditional on-the-bolt fabric in the fact that they come on rolls to avoid the wrinkles and the creases that a traditional bolt has.

But more importantly, it's much wider. Your standard decorating fabric is anywhere from 54 to 60 inches wide, which makes it a lot easier to work with when you're doing draperies. The lining fabric that I'm going to use. This one happens to be by Roc-lon. And it is rubberized on the back.

You can't really tell that much of a difference, but there is a rubber coating here. And that makes for an insulated lining. Since I live in the mountains and it gets rather cold where we live, I definitely want to line my draperies and have this insulating factor. The lining, historically comes a little bit shorter than what the decorator fabrics are. This particular lining was 54 inches.

So I want to discuss some of the concerns that you need to think about as you're working with both the decorating fabric and the lining. The first thing you want to figure out is how much fabric do you need. You're going to want to measure your window from side to side, but you also need to consider how far past the window will the rod be coming. Do you have a casing around your window? If so, you want to measure out to the end of the casing and then to however far out on the rod you want your drapery to come.

That will determine the width. As far as the length, you want to measure from where the top of the curtain will be to where you want the final length, whether it's a floor-length drapery, or as in the case that I did for these, they're coming just pass the window sill. So from the top of my casing to the bottom of my window sill was 63 and a half inches. And that's how long my finished drapery needs to be. When you're figuring the amount of yardage, as far as the length, to your finished length, in my case, the 63 inches, I want to add an extra four inches which be the header on the top of the drapery.

And I want to add four inches for my hem on the bottom. Your header may be wider than four inches, depending on how much fabric you want to show above the rings. So if you want to have a three-inch header, you will need to come down further. So you would probably make that five inches for the header instead of four. So these are just some things to keep in mind.

So that would be your total length. In my case, that would be four plus four is eight and eight plus 63 is 71. So I cut the length of my curtain at 71 inches. As far as the width, traditionally with curtains, especially if they're sheared or shirred rather on a rod, we usually want to go anywhere from one and a half or rather two to two and a half times the width of the window. In the case of these draperies, they historically tend to hang straight when they're closed, and rather flat with maybe just a little bit of a ripple.

And I have found that a good multiplier is 1.25. So basically the width of my window and a quarter more of the width. So I took the width of my window which was three feet, plus I had four inches on either side. So eight and 36 was 42. And I multiplied that times 1.25 to get the width that I needed to cut.

All right, now, when you first get your fabric, you're going to notice this is called the selvage edge, and the selvage always runs the length of the fabric. So if this is my fabric laid out, you'll notice on both ends, there is a selvage. This selvage is more tightly woven than the rest of the fabric. And so when you're doing draperies, I always recommend that you cut that selvage off, because if you don't, when you're doing your seam, it will tend to distort and pull and your drapery won't hang as straight as you would like it to. So that's your first step is go ahead and cut off the selvage.

And then I like to go ahead and do a serged edge around it, especially if I have a ravely fabric. You can see here where I have serged this edge. It's hard to see with the, since the thread matches so well, but it serged all along so that it won't ravel and be more difficult to work with. As far as your lining fabric goes, you don't have to do any prep to that. There is no selvage on it because it was a bonded lining.

If you use a different type of lining that doesn't have the rubberized backing, then you would want to cut the selvages off and also serge those or edge finish them on your sewing machine. The first thing that you do when you make these curtains, after you have your edges serged is you're going to want to turn back your hem and go ahead and hem your curtain. All right? So get your nice three to four-inch hem there. And you're going to do the seam thing for your lining.

You can see I've got the hem right there. After that, what you're going to do is pin your lining to your actual drapery, and you want to pin it so that your right sides are together. Just like he would with normal sewing. The trick here is your lining is cut shorter. Remember I said I did 71 inches for my drapery fabric.

On my lining fabric, I needed to go the length of the finished curtain, which was going to be 63 inches minus one inch, because I want the lining to fall one inch shorter than my drapery. That is my finished length. It is not going to go up to the top. It will fall within the header. So all I need to add is the extra fabric for the hem.

So that would be 62 plus four inches for the hem would be I'd cut it at 66 inches. When I get ready to pin, I want to come up one inch from the bottom of the hem and put my pin there, and then start pinning all the way along. And the end pin should be where the header part is which was four inches down, all right? Because this is going to come back over your lining to cover it. Something you need to be aware of is that because the drapery fabric is wider than the lining fabric, there's going to be bulk.

You can see this in here. So, your fabric is not going to lay perfectly flat. That's okay, this is how we want it. So after you get it pinned, go ahead and sew both sides, which you can see we already have done here. And then we're going to take it off and go over to the ironing board and iron this.

And I am a firm believer in pressing, the more you press, the nicer your work will look. All right, so I find if I pull it up on the board like this, it helps roll my seam. And I want the seam to come back towards the drapery fabric. And then go ahead and just press this. And if you have steam, that's a great thing to use.

And even though this fabric, the lining fabric has a rubber backing, you can use it just, I would try it first on a sample and make sure you're not too hot. I use a slightly cooler iron, but not by a lot. And then you can just pull this up. Usually I will start at the far end and work back. What I want to show you here though is there's a certain amount that did not go into the seam because you're coming down four inches.

So what I find works very very well is if you just come right along and press. Then just press that back even to what your seam allowance was. And for your seam allowance you want to give a good half inch up to an inch when you sew for your seam allowance because that will give it a stability and will help it hang nicer. The same way with using a deep hem, the three to four-inch hem gives extra weight to the drapery and helps it hang nicely. All right, so we're going to take this off and I'm going to show you the next step back at the table.

Now that we've pressed our drapery, I've gone ahead and turned it right side out. And you can see now, where after you turn it, the edges roll toward the inside because of the extra fabric and because the lining is cut shorter. So this will automatically roll in. What you want to do at this point is make sure the two sides are even. And nice and flat.

So I've already got one side pinned. Let me show you how to do this on the other side real quick. Now, typically I like to have closer to an inch and a half, maybe even two inches when I'm having my fabric roll back in. So in that case, I would have cut my lining even a little bit shorter. The problem that I have is because of the width of my window, I needed every bit of the fabric width that I could get.

So I am going with a three quarter inch side seam allowance here, or a side allowance, I should say. And so I'm just coming down and making sure that I'm getting an even amount on both sides. Occasionally give it a little tug to make sure that you're nice and flat, without ripples. And actually if you've done a nice job pressing those seams when you're done sewing them, it really makes this portion a lot easier. Sometimes I believe in take and smooth my fabric with a straight edge if I find that I'm having some difficulties.

And when you finish pinning, I would highly suggest going over and pressing. And as you can see, we have this little portion here that is loose because of the seam. This was where we pressed it back on the ironing board when we did our, let me go back in here and show you when we did our seam allowance, as it rolled in, I just did that seam like that. So now I want to go ahead and make sure that this is the same distance as my turn in so that it's even all throughout. So at this point, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to sew just these edges, because once I've steamed this, it will stay in place.

If you really are concerned about it, you can come along and stitch right in the ditch here, and you will have a line of stitching on the outside of your drapery. I traditionally don't like to have that line showing and I've found if I give it a very thorough steaming, it tends to stay, but it's your preference, and whichever you prefer you can do. So let's go to the sewing machine right now and get this ready for the next step. Now that we have our sides pinned and prepped, we want to go ahead and just stitch this little area between the bottom of the drapery hem and the bottom of the lining hem. You can do this by hand if you want, but if you're like me, the more I can avoid hand sewing the better I like it.

So let's go ahead and sew that, you're going to want to stitch as close as you can to your edge. And just get this started, and then make sure you are not sewing over pins. I know a lot of us do that, but you really shouldn't just because if you hit a pin and it breaks, you have the possibility of interfering with the timing of your machine. And if that happens, your machine's going to be going into to see the repairman for a rather expensive repair. So I highly recommend that you don't sew over pins.

It also tends to make your pins rougher on the edges, from the pressure of the foot going over the pins and your feed dogs. It will tend to nick your pins. So now we've just got one more to do for the hem. Let's get that started. And I am taking the pin out just before I sew because I wanted to make sure that that stayed in place.

Okay. Okay. And as you can see, I am doing a little bit of a whoops, a little bit of a backstitch here to catch that edge. Now I went ahead and did that on the top edges also. And again, you're just sewing from the edge of the lining up to the end of the fabric when you sew.

All right so now that we have that part done, now, we want to come and do our header. Now the bigger of a table you have to work with, the easier this is, but if you don't have a big table you can do this on the floor. But the idea is you want to keep everything as flat as you can. Now I have already pressed this header so that I have a four-inch top there. So I can just go ahead and start pinning this all the way across.

And believe it or not, we're almost done with these curtains. And I want to make sure that at the edges that my edges are nice and flat there that I don't have a little piece sticking out because it will be seen when it's hanging. You can always go back and remeasure again just to double check your work if you want. But if you give an a good press ahead of time you should be just fine. So now let's go ahead and sew this.

And I want to show you a little trick here for making it easier. I'm doing a four-inch hem and even though I sewed, I have it all pinned and I know it's just perfect, sometimes things can get off. So I like to make a little jig, if you will. I take two rulers and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to allow myself, Oh let's say a quarter of an inch just for safety sake. And now I know that from the center of my needle to the edge of this ruler is three and a quarter inches.

So I want to take some tape, painter's tape works very well, packing tape, I know I shouldn't use my teeth, but I do. And I just take a couple of pieces and I want to get in there with my fingernail to anchor that down. And then I do another piece the same way. Now, if you notice, I went ahead and I folded over the edge of the tape and that's so that when I get ready to take it off, it'll be much easier. Now I can take this out and I know that if I run the edge of my fabric against this ruler, it's going to be a perfectly even hem.

And that's what shows from the right side. So even if you haven't pinned this exactly perfectly, it will look like it's perfect from the right side. So let's go ahead and sew that. And we'll show you how, whoops, how wonderfully well this little jig works. Working with a lot of fabric is not always easy.

You will be fighting it. So it's nice if you have a large table where you can throw it over to the side. And now what I'm watching is my jig to make sure that my fabric is going through there, nice and even. All right, and now you can see, that we have a nice header. It's a little hard to see the seam line just because of the color of the thread matching so well, but it has indeed stayed even all the way down.

So now let's go ahead and show you the final steps for finishing our curtain, which is putting in the grommets. Now we have our curtain totally prepped. It's all done except for putting in the grommets. And you can see this is where we pressed our edges and steamed it very well. How nice and flat it's laying and it has a nice sharp knife edge.

Grommets are sold in a different fabric stores or drapery supply places. And they will come in a packet like this. Typically there will be eight in a package. When you take them out, the grommets have two different parts to them. One side has rings around them and this side will be going to the outside.

This will be the part that shows. The part that goes on the lining side has little pins in them. And these are so that they can attach the fabric securely to the grommet and not slip. So we will be putting those on in just a minute. When you get ready to mark your grommets, and I've already got a few of these in, you want to make sure that you allow room for the return side on your curtain.

Now, the return is if this was my curtain rod, it's the part that comes back to the wall. So my hand would be the return. And you want to measure that so that you know where to start putting your first grommet. Typically about two to two and a half inches works very well. So that's what I've done here.

I made mine right at two inches from the edge. I also made it so that I am two inches down from the top. And you can just put your ruler along and measure that, I'm just short of two inches. Now, when you do grommets, you always want to use an even number because of the way it threads on the rod. You need the two outer ones to be on the outside so that it will make that return.

So you always want to use an even number and you want to space them evenly apart. I find if I can get about four inches of spacing, that I will get a nice pleat like this, that's about two inches in depth as it is folded back. And I will show you that at the end of the program. So in your little packet of grommets, you will get your grommets, and then you'll get this little template. And the template is what helps you mark where your grommet should go.

So as you mark in you're going to come in two inches plus whatever half of the grommet width this. So these grommets to the center are right at an inch, call it an inch and a half. So I want to, plus the outside, which is almost another 3/8ths of an inch. So to get to the half is going to be right at about an inch an inch and a quarter. So I've got an inch and a quarter plus my two inches on the edge, the center is at three.

And then from the center to the center, I'm going to be right at about seven inches. All right, that may sound a little confusing but it will make sense as you do it. And then between my grommets is just a little over four inches. All right, so go ahead and measure out. And you put a little cross in the center where your grommet should go, and then you take your template.

You would line it up with center line and then just simply mark it. And you can see where I've already marked these grommets. And then I like to come back with my ruler and just double-check one more time that everybody's even. This is the time to make any adjustments that you want. Once the grommet's in, you're truly out of luck.

And you want to mark it on the backside, just in case you do end up moving your grommets slightly so that this won't be on the right side of your fabric. Once you have it marked, it's actually rather simple. Although this is probably the hardest part for a lot of us, we're going to cut this gorgeous fabric and hope that we don't goof up. So I fold it in half and I just make a little cut, don't go too far, just enough to get in so that you can cut your circle. And you want a nice sharp pair of scissors to do this because you are going through three layers.

There's one. Now I'll do the other one. All right, so we finished cutting out the holes for our grommets. And now we're going to take the first one and you make sure that the ring side goes to the outside and you just put that down and work your fabric around it. And then you're going to take the one that has the little pins and put that right on top.

And then you want to press down hard until you hear a snap. And that's all there is to it. You don't need any special tools. Let's do this last one. Fits right in there, nice and neat from your hole that you cut.

You take the one with the pins, put it on top. And snap it down. Now, if you're like me, even though it says it's on, I like to have a little security. So I take a little piece of a cutting board is what that is. I put it under the grommet, and I have a rubber mallet that I have procured.

Give it a couple of whacks. Give it a couple of whacks. And it's not going anywhere. And with that, we now have our finished curtain that's ready to hang. And we were able to do that in just a very short amount of time.

Again, you should be able to do this within an afternoon without any problem whatsoever.