Shower Curtain curtains

I never really intended for HD to be the place where I shared my own version of diy projects that I find around the blog-o-sphere, but thanks to pinterest, I think I'm finding more projects than there is time to complete them!  The nursery is taking up all my creating time these days and now that we're half way there, the pressure is on.  Since we aren't finding out Baby W's gender and because my baby showers are a few months away, I've been trying to focus on prepping the room.  We have a great double window with plantation (ish) shutters, so all we really needed was a little something to brighten things up.

I've made my own curtains in the past but have learned that the best sewing projects for my skill level are those that dont involve large pieces of fabric.  I was thrilled to come across a really easy tutorial on laybabylay for window curtains made out of shower curtains.  

I found the grey and white shower curtain from West Elm on sale for $33!  I actually bought the citron stripe first but it wasn't quite bright enough so I exchanged it for the grey.  I couldn't believe my luck on this as purchasing fabric alone is often much more expensive than this.

How I did it...first I cut the curtain in half and ironed a 1/2 inch seam on the cut side (left pic). Then I folded these over again, ironed and pinned the edge before sewing (right pic).  *Note - I've found that many design bloggers out there are afraid of sewing seams and instead use iron on tape.  This boggles my mind because I find ironing straight to be the hardest part! While I've never tried the tape, I just want to put out there that this was easy to sew and matches the other side of the curtain (bonus).  The sewing machine is your friend!

Then, instead of hemming the top of the curtain and losing length, I decided to use grommet rings.  I purchased two packs of 1 inch matte black grommets from JoAnns with a coupon.  Side note, I always get excited when I have a 40% off coupon from JoAnns but am immediately discouraged when I get to the store and everything is on sale and therefore, not covered by the coupon.  Anyway, the grommets rarely go on sale so this made my day! The button holes that you typically use for a shower curtain were already centered and evenly spaced so it was easy to cut my holes.  Sew 4 Home suggests doing a zig zag stitch around the hole to keep it from fraying when you wash but I found sewing a 1 inch circle to be way too challenging and just popped the grommet on there.

The finished curtains!  Pretty good for under 40 bucks and less than an hours worth of work. Granted, these are a little shorter than I would normally do for a curtain, and probably why laybabylay suggests adding a contrasting fabric on the bottom, but this wont be a problem for long as I'm planning a window seat/storage bench for below the window.  More on that soon (aka when we finish the project).