Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Black and White Patchwork Curtains

If you sew, you generally end up with fabric scraps. I had amassed quite a large pile of scraps, many of them in black-and-white prints. I decided to use these to make patchwork curtains for my workroom.

Wanting an easy pattern for my first foray into patchwork, I opted for a subway tile type pattern using 3" x 6" rectangles vertically (3" wide x 6" long). To cover my window, I would make two curtain panels 36" (twelve 3" rectangles) wide and 60" (ten 6" rectangles) long. Thus I would need 120 rectangles per panel; 240 rectangles total. I cut 240 rectangles.

I used what may seem like an unorthodox process to sew the panels because I was using a serger rather than a regular sewing machine. It's quick and easy to serge in an assembly line fashion with little stopping and starting, and I took advantage of that. The general idea was to sew the rectangles/patches into vertical strips and then sew those strips together to make a panel.

For each panel, I began with 120 patches.

First, I sewed 104 of the patches into pairs. I selected two fabrics more or less randomly and stitched them together at one short end. This gave me 52 pairs.

I set aside four of the pairs. I sewed the other 48 pairs into quads. This gave me 24 quads.

Next, I sewed the 24 quads into... er, is there a word for sets of 8? Octos? We'll go with octos. I was just making this up as I went along anyway. ;) This gave me 12 octos.

On four of the octos, I added a pair, giving me four strips of 10.

On eight of the octos, I added a single patch, giving me eight strips of 9.

I had eight single 6" long patches remaining. I cut each of these into two pieces: one 4" long and one 2" long.

On four of the strips of 9, I added a 4" long patch at the top and a 2" long patch at the bottom.

On the other four strips of 9, I added a 2" long patch at the top and a 4" long patch at the bottom.

I now had four strips with a 6" patch at the top, four with a 4" patch at the top, and four with a 2" patch at the top. I laid these out 6-4-2-6-4-2, etc. to form a subway tile type pattern.

I stitched the 12 strips together to form a panel. Then I called my regular sewing machine into duty to hem the sides and bottom of the panel.

The final step was to add a pocket for the curtain rod. I cut a piece of fabric 4.5" x 35" (the finished width of my panel). I folded up .75" along one long side, then hemmed the short sides.

With right sides together, I sewed the unfolded long side of the strip to the top of the panel.

Then, I folded the strip over to the back of the panel and stitched it down along the folded long side. This created the bottom of the rod pocket. I then stitched a seam about 1" below the top to form a header above the rod pocket. The seams are difficult to see in the photo, so I added blue marks to show where they are.

I repeated the process for the second panel... and ta-da! Patchwork curtains. :D


25 comments:

  1. Oooh, these look amazing! I'm only starting to get into sewing, but I'll try to make these at some point in the future.

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    1. Thanks! Patchwork would be good practice for sewing straight, consistent seams.

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  2. These are the best curtains I've seen! Do you have any of those scraps left? Some of the prints are perfect for doll clothing.

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    1. Thank you! I needed every scrap of the black and white fabrics to make enough patches. In fact, I had to pull the polka dot fabric out of my regular stash to make the last 25 or so.

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    2. It was well worth it. Next stop - a goth quilt!

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  3. They are lovely and great idea how to use that excessive fabric. It would be interestING to see a series on gothic patch work. I love the fabric you choose

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    1. Thank you! The curtains were fun to make, and I'm already working on another patchwork project. :D

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  4. This is so cute! You reminded me how I love patchwork, the curtains look very 80s :D

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    1. Thank you! Ha ha... I hadn't thought about the '80s look, but you're right. :)

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  5. those are some amazing curtains! I'm going to have to stop throwing out my scraps from leftover projects and saving them for ultimately bigger projects like this..

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  6. These look lovely! I really like the way you decided to use left-over fabric for curtains.

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  7. Super cute! I noticed that the Goth Gardener had just recently made a post about mourning quilts and thought a gothy (or just simply macabre) quilt like that would be an excellent way to use all the scrap fabric! :) Unfortunately I do not know how to sew, so I never have scrap fabric myself. :D

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    1. Thanks! I have quite a few purple and black scraps that I'm thinking of making into a quilt.

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  8. These curtains are so wonderful! You did an amazing job, I love patchwork but I've only done it by hand (in hexagonal patterns) and so it takes about 5 years to make a cushion cover. I like this much better!!!

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    1. Thank you! A hexagonal pattern... impressive! I totally took the easy route. ;) (But I actually like the randomness of it.)

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  9. Whoa! Amazing! I am forever impressed with your creative sewing skills!!!

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  10. They remind me of some gothy cartoon design <3 beautiful!

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