Amend: Shortening Curtains

We got some cheap IKEA curtains last week, to hang at the window on the stairs in our flat. The curtains only come in one length, 300cm, which was dragging on the floor - dangerous on a flight of stairs.

This is not necessarily the best guide on how to shorten curtains properly... Ours were cheap and I wanted to get them done in one evening.

The fabric had a clear line detail in the weave, so I was hoping to be able to measure one side, then follow one of those lines across in a straight line to the other side.

Ideally you would measure down from the top of the curtain, to get them the same length. But I didn't have enough space to do that. Instead, I measured up from the bottom by 80cm on one side, and followed the weave across with pins. Unfortunately, what was 80cm on one side, was 82cm on the other. Maybe it was optimistic that cheap IKEA curtains would be sewn squarely along the fabric...

I abandoned this approach, and instead, folded the curtain in half along its length (top left to top right) and then repeated into quarters. I then measured 80cm up each side, pinned a straightish line using a slat from a Venetian blind, and hacked off the bottom of the curtain.

A few pins to hold it in place for a double-fold hem, with the raw edges hidden inside, then I whisked it through the sewing machine. Then they needed a few hand-sewn sections at the ends, to seal the ends at each side.

Here's a trick I use when tying off thread ends. As well as back-stitching the seam, I like to knot the long ends to tie them off tightly. The problem can be, that if you snip the thread ends off, that knot can come undone. My solution is, after tying the knot, to then sew a long stitch, with the thread inside the hem, emerging about 1cm from the original knot, and trim it off there.

Then a quick blast under the iron, hop up the ladder et voilà!