Pinterest Challenge: Nursery Curtains

I was going to wait until the nursery was completely finished to show any pictures of my nursery projects. But then two of my favorite blogs, Bower Power and Young House Love posted a Pinterest Challenge and I just couldn't resist joining in.  Katie, Sherry, Kate and Michelle created these Pinterest challenges in order to stop pinning and start doing. Whenever I see one of their challenges pop up in my browser I think that it would be cool to join in but I never do.  Well, this time I can because this past weekend I made curtains for the nursery from a Pin on Pinterest!

Cayden's bedding is Alligator Madras Plaid from Pottery Barn. It has a plaid bed skirt and bumper and navy and white striped quilt and pillow sham. I wanted to do some bold accessories in the room but didn't know where to start. So I turned to Pinterest. I found a tutorial on painted curtains but didn't think that was for me since I'd prefer to work with fabric than paint. Then I found this picture from Project Nursery and I loved the curtains and decorations.

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From that site I went to The Thrifty Abode (whose nursery it was) and found an earlier picture of the nursery curtains with step by step directions on how to make them using white Ikea Rivta curtains, navy bed sheets and Stitch Whitchery to iron on the navy stripes. 

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After making Adalyn's curtains from scratch I had sworn off curtain making ever in the future. Of course I could have paid $79 per panel at Pottery Barn Kids for the same look, but that is just crazy talk! Plus I decided this tutorial would be way easier than Adalyn's curtains because I was starting with curtains and just embellishing them instead of creating curtains from nothing.  I got myself to Ikea to pick up some white curtains ($25 for the pair) and then grabbed some navy fabric from a fabric store. I started to cut the fabric into stripes but I drove myself crazy trying to get the fabric just right on my cutting board and I wasn't able to ever get the navy fabric perfectly cut. I finally called it a night and decided I should have just spent the money because it would be worth the anxiety that these curtains were causing me.  I took a breath, called Shannon who's crafty and great with fabric and she agreed to come over the next day. She reminded me that everything in life doesn't have to be perfect.  Who will know if that stripe wasn't exactly perfect? So I crossed my fingers and went ahead and made the cuts. I then used my measuring guide and chalk to mark where to iron the seam allowance in order to make crisp straight horizontal lines. 

(Would you believe I took zero pictures of the process?) 

We laid out the curtains on the floor and pinned on the navy stripes. At that point I was still planning on actually sewing the fabric when Shannon talked me into using the Stitch Witchery to iron on the fabric. I honestly hadn't even thought of that (even though that's what the other blog had used). The only time I've ever used it is on other Ikea curtains since they come with it. So my wonderful hubby ran to the store to pick up some SW and we got our ironing on!  We each took an iron and made great time. We ironed the stripes onto the panel and then flipped the panel over to wrap the extra side inch "seam allowance" onto the back of the panel. We finished one panel and Shannon had to leave, so after dinner my mom took over helping me and we finished the second panel. (No easy task to be bending over a 9 month pregnant belly on the floor but I was determined to get it done!) Of course these were panels from Ikea that came hemmed already but for some reason they were hemmed very poorly (wavy and the two panels were about 1 to 2 inches different  in length). So I hung the curtains up and while they were on the wall I actually hemmed up the curtains to make sure they were the right height. 

I have to say that I really think ironing on the fabric helped me keep my sanity. It worked well and I think it was way less of a hassle than getting giant curtains through my sewing machine. I absolutely think that the curtains make the room! I love how bold they are and how they pull the room together!

Here is a wide view of the room.

I still plan on showing before pictures of our nursery when it was a guest room and also how Jonathan and my dad did the board and batten (another tutorial from a blog I read). Hopefully within the next week there will be decorations on the walls! I feel like the room is really coming together and can't wait to see how the wall hangings complete things. Decorating a boy room without some sort of "theme" is hard work y'all! After the nursery is completely finished I'll give more of a tour of the room!!