DIY No Sew Blackout Curtains

I am very excited to share with you my DIY no sew blackout curtains for the nursery!

I have been looking all over for curtains to use for the nursery- the only ones I found I liked were from RH Baby and were $100+ a panel! Who spends that much on curtains?! I looked on Pinterest and saw many people making no sew curtains- perfect for me since I don’t own a sewing machine (I asked Andrew for one for Christmas but he thought I said soda machine, so I ended up with a SodaStream lol) Anyway….
This past weekend was Presidents Day so JoAnne Fabric was having a bunch of sales and on top of the sales you could use coupons! Double savings!! So I headed out to look for fabric to make me some custom no sew curtains!

I found these 2 damask patterns that I liked and after speaking with my consultant (my sister 🙂 ) we decided on the one on the right. I happily skipped off to the cutting counter to take a number to get my fabric cut along with everyone else and their mother…. there were like 20 people in front of me! They finally called my number and the lady informed me there was not nearly the 6 yards of fabric I needed 😦 So I took what they had and figured I’d think of something to do with it later. Then on the drive home I got the brilliant idea of doing a colorblock type curtain! So the next day I went back to JoAnne and bought solid white, solid light pink and blackout fabric. I originally wasn’t thinking of doing blackout but I knew they needed to be lined and the blackout stuff was only a dollar more than the non-blackout, so I got the blackout. I also picked up some Stitch Witchery, the heavy duty kind.

First, I laid out the fabric to compare a couple different colorblock styles. I ended up going with this one:

Then I drew a little diagram and decided on measurements- the width was decided for me based on the width of the white fabric:

I cut out all the pieces and started the iron the sections together with the Stitch Witchery. It says on the package to use a damp cloth between the fabric and iron, I did this in the beginning but I think I was using too thick of a cloth because the tape did not melt at all. So I ditched the cloth. I laid the pieces face to face and ironed the tape in between them. I did this to attach the pink to white and printed fabric.

Colby was helping me 🙂

 

I then laid the panel face down on the floor and put the blackout fabric over it. I made sure the white plastic-y side was face down towards the curtain. I cut the blackout fabric to be 1/2 inch shorter than the curtain width and length to account for the ‘hem’. Once the blackout fabric was cut I made sure everything was smoothed out and started ironing the seams together. I tried to keep the iron off the actual blackout fabric to keep it from melting/warping. I didn’t make any loops for the curtain rod since I am going to be using clips.

Finished seams!

Finished Panel!

After I finished the first panel I got started on the second panel and the second one took wayyy less time to finish. It took about 6 hours to complete both panels start to finish. Of course that 6 hours includes a lunch break, potty breaks (which are like every 30 minutes now that I’m preggo) & puppy playtime breaks. It was well worth the 6 hours considering how much money I saved and got custom curtains :). This was a super easy project  and I have a feeling the rest of my house will have curtains very shortly!

The cost breakdown is as follows (all prices include discounts and coupons from JoAnne):
1/2 yard Pink Fabric: $2.50 (I bought more than than 1/2 yard, but that is all I used for the curtains)
5 yards White Fabric: $10.00
1 yard Gray Damask Fabric: $5.00 (again, I bought more than than 1 yard, but that is all I used for the curtains)
6 yards Blackout Fabric: $25.00
2 rolls heavy duty Stitch Witchery (13 yards each): $3.00

So the total for 2 blackout panels is $45.00!! Only $22.50 per panel! Most blackout curtains that I have seen go for at least $70+ a panel.

I have a gorgeous curtain rod I got from JoAnne’s  a while back, that was on clearance for $9.00 (originally $40.00!!!) that will be used in the nursery! I’m going to wait to hang these until we get the nursery painted so look out for a future post to see how they look hanging!