How To Make Drapes

For this masterclass we chose the easiest drapes without lining. These drapes will be ideal not only for your kitchen, but also for your living room as well. Well, let’s see how to sew these beautiful drapes.

Materials you’ll need:

• A piece of cloth of the required size and wideness;
• A ruler;
• Scissors;
• A sewing machine;
• Threads and sewing pins;
• An iron and an ironing-board.

A Step-By-Step Instruction On “How To Sew Drapes” (Pictures Are Also Provided)

Before you go to a shop to buy a cloth, you need to measure the window on which we’ll hang the drapes. For example, our window is 170 cm wide and 215 cm high. In this case, the most important parameter will be the length of the window or the distance from the eaves to the floor. The wideness of the drapes can be changed according to your liking.

On the picture you can see that the eaves is located 20 cm above the window. Consequently, when measuring the required size of the cloth, we need to add 20 cm to 215 cm. As a result, we get 235 cm. In our case, the eaves can hang higher or lower. Consequently, the measurements will be different. You should decide whether the drapes will fall all the way down to the floor or they will reach out only to the windowsill or the slew beforehand.

All these things change the parameter of the drapes. You also need to remember about allowances. 5 cm will be enough for an upper allowance. However, the lower one needs to be made wider, for example, 20-25 cm. You decide on the wideness of the drapes according to your liking.

Since in our case the drapes are sliding, one half of the drapes is approximately equal to the wideness of the window plus 5 more cm for allowances on each of the sides. In order for you to understand everything better let’s count how much cloth we’ll need for the sliding drapes that will hang on the windows the parameters of which we’ve already given. Length: 215 cm (height of the window) + 20 cm (from the window to the eaves) +20 cm (lower allowance) +5 cm (upper allowance) = 260 cm. Wideness: 170 cm (the wideness of the window) x2+5 cm allowances on each of the sides = 340+5x4 = 360 cm.

So, we’ve bought the cloth for drapes. Now we need to cut it out in a right way. Maybe in order to do it you’ll need to fold the cloth twice or thrice. Having cut the cloth out in the needed cutoffs, turn it over so that its wrong side is now up. Bend the edge of the cloth along its length on 2.5 cm and iron it. In our case there was a special line along the edge. We bent it. You can see it on the picture.

We bent the cloth once more, this time the allowance is 3 cm. We iron it as well. We fasten the allowances with the pins and do the same on the other side of the cloth. We stitch them up on a sewing machine. The closer to the edge we stitch, the better. Don’t forget to have a double stitching of 2-3 cm in the beginning and in the end of the stitching in order to fasten the thread.

We do the same and follow the same steps with the second half of the drapes. This is what we should get as a result. Now we can get to the undercut of the lower edge of the drapes. Make sure that your cloth is lying with its wrong side up. Measure out 20 cm, bend the cloth and iron it. Do the same along all the wideness of the drapes.

As a result, you’ll get a wide, beautiful hem along the lower edge of the drapes. We fasten it with the sewing pins and stitch it up. We should do it as close to the edge as possible. This is what we’ll get as a result.

We are almost finished! The only thing left is to undercut the upper part of the drapes and fasten rings on clips to the drapes. Bend the cloth on 2.5 cm and iron it the way we did that before. Bend the cloth once again on 3 cm and iron it. Fasten it with the sewing pins and stitch it up on the sewing machine. You should stitch as close to the edge as possible.

You may put aside the sewing machine, you won’t need it anymore. We fasten the rings on the clips on the equal distance from one another and hang the drapes on the eaves.