Making or more appropriately saying sewing is not that hard if you know how to do it correctly. Blackout curtains are again becoming popular with the ever-increasing climatic changes. In this guide, we will be taking you step by step through the process of how to make blackout curtains. Below is a list of things you may need.
- Fabric- around 6 yards + 20 inches
- Blackout lining- foam or thick cotton roll, 6 yards
- Grosgrain ribbon- used for tabs you can also use satin but that is not durable enough for blackout curtains, 1 to ½ inch white
- Threads- white
- Pins- to keep the material in place while sewing
- Scissors- heavy-duty, sharp stainless steel preferred
- Meter stick-for accurate measurement
- Marker- to pen down your measurements
- Iron- to remove wrinkles, to press the edges and corners
- Sewing machine
- The first thing to do is measure the fabric for the area you will be covering, e.g., for an 8ft room, your curtain panels should be 100 inches + 10 inches for hems. The length of the curtains depends upon the rod, how high will the rod be installed? From this measure the length and breadth of your window, from the top of the rod to the edge of the floor and add 8-10 inches to this for the hems.
- Put the fabric over a table or floor or a clean flat surface. Pat it down to make sure there is nothing under and smooth the fabric, measure the fabric, and mark it down according to the calculations you made earlier for the window. Do not forget the hems.
- Make use of the yardstick as it is long and lightweight, making it user-friendly; make straight lines on the fabric where you need to cut.
- Now pick up your stainless-steel scissors or the fabric cutting scissors you have at home and start snipping the lines you just made.
- When done, move it aside and get working on the blackout lining material, for this you should repeat the same process we just did but do not add the extra inches of fabric for the hemlines.
- When everything is cut, nice and ready. Use your iron to smooth out any wrinkles over the surface. Fold your hemlines, secure them with pins and iron them to get a crisp fold.
- Now arrange both of your fabrics together, place the outer layer, right side down and over it the blackout lining, right side up.
- Now fold your hems on the lining, secure them with pins and start sewing. Sew all the edges so that all the lining comes together with the curtain.
- Moving on to the tabs, sew tabs over an inch from the top side with 5 inches in-between.
- Use grosgrain ribbons for the bottom of the tabs, fold the ribbon and fabric together under 1/2 inches and sew the seam on the panel, that is the bottom of the tab. Hem the bottom. You can also hang them before sewing the bottom hem so that you can measure the correct length.
