Bedroom Curtains

I am finally finishing up redoing my oldest son's bedroom.  Well, it's actually just the bedroom he is staying in until he is able to get out on his own.

This room will eventually become my husband's office.  You can read about and see all the transformations here.

My last touch was to make some curtains for this room. 

I never used to be a curtain person.  When we first bought our house, the people who lived here had up some cheap thrown-together curtains on all the windows.  I ripped most of them down and threw them away and haven't really  had curtains on any of our windows since. 

It's only been in the past couple years that I've really gotten to like the look of curtains and have wanted to add them to our rooms.

I decided that instead of buying pre-made curtains, that it would be super simple for me to make some. 

It actually was and I love how they turned out.

The first thing on the agenda was to find some material.  JoAnn's is having a great sale on material this week.  All of the home decorating fabrics are 50% off.  They also have a great selection of Red Tag sales that are already marked down.  On Tuesday night we all headed to JoAnn's to take a look and see what we could find.  I found lots of fabrics in the home decorating area that I loved but none that really jumped out at me for this room.

I then went over to the quilting fabric section and found this.

I knew it was the one as soon as I saw it.  It was $8 and was on sale for 30% off.  That would still make it around $6 per yard and I needed 8 yards.  I still couldn't buy pre-made curtains for 2 windows for that price.

So I took it to the cutting table to have the lady measure it for me and when she scanned the bar code, she said "You are never going to believe this".  I love when they say that.  Apparently this material was discontinued and it was marked down to $2 per yard. 

YES!!! This was my lucky day.  She had 8 yards exactly, which was what I needed!  Score!!

I just had her leave it all on the bolt so my first step was to measure and cut.  I needed 2 yards per panel (2 panels per window)

I then ironed the panels.

I decided that I would do about an 1/2 inch seam around the perimeter.  So I pressed that down and pinned it.

I then sewed all the sides so they would have a nice finish.

Hubby had some curtain rods in the garage that we had taken down when we moved in.  I can remember taking them down and giving him a hard time because he saved them in the garage instead of throwing them away.  Thank goodness he's a hoarder saver. 

I then measured the curtain rod to see how much of a pocket I would need for each panel.  I just turned that over and sewed it together.

We got one of the windows hung last night.  I think they look fabulous.

I'm very happy with how they turned out.  Now, I just need to get busy and get the other pair sewn.

Before and after:

Total cost of this project was $16.  I never would have been able to find curtains that cheap.

Total cost of this room makeover was about $64.

So, how about you?  Do you make curtains for your home? Do you have curtains in your home or were you like me and didn't want any on your windows?  I'm so glad my tastes have changed, I love the look and color it adds to a room.

I'm linking up to these parties.  Be sure to head over there for some serious inspiration.