So when you think of divisions its usually between football teams, college ball teams, or math equations. And you'd be correct. All of those have or include divisions.

But in my house we have divisions in opinion. We also have divisions in healthy vs. unhealthy. Let's start on the opinions first.

I put up altered curtains and I'm not sure I like them. All the men in my house like them, but now lets  look at the 2nd division in the house - healthy vs. unhealthy. All of the men in my house are sick. The boys are in the throws of pneumonia and Steve is ill too, nothing definitive on what he has, but he's on two different meds to treat his symptoms. So in a house where I'm out numbered in everything, usually I get final say in decorating.

But all of the sick men decided they like my new curtains and I'm wrong because I don't like them, even though my argument is I'm not sick and therefore thinking more clearly. That did not hold any water. I'm now thinking of going with the argument, I'm the only healthy one in this house and if you want a pleasant recovery then you'll stop arguing with me about the curtains that I altered and put up.

I like the ring of the next argument! Don't you? Anyways, enough of my bitching even though I am bitter about being the only healthy one. Do you know how much whining goes on in a whole full of sick men? I should win  some type of award. Really I should. Or I'm going to move in with Mom for a few days.

So anyways, here are the pictures.




Here's what was there

I love that these curtains are so much brighter and  lighter. The curtains are from Ikea and they have a linen look. I was going to tell you how I made them, but since I'm not in love with them. I don't think I am. I think I will eventually take them down (when I get bothered by them enough) and then alter them again and then I will share what I did. Unless you guys like them and think I should share what I did.

I'm going to go pick up some prescriptions now - gotta get this house healthy!

So today I'm going to share how I altered my tab top curtains to back tab curtains. You can see the finished product hanging here.


This may be the simplest curtain alteration - ever.

Seriously. Someone with no sewing experience could do this.

So lets get started.

Obv you need to have a tab top curtain.

I ironed my curtain so that everything would be nice, crisp and flat.

What we're going to do is fold the tabbed portions back underneath the curtain header and then stitch them down. Now where you stitch is up to you and the width of your curtain rod. My curtains rods are teeny so I was able to stitch in the ditch of the existing header so you can't even see my new stitches.

Here's me folding the first tab to the backside of the curtain.

You can't really see it, but I am stitching in the ditch (stitching over existing stitching).

Here's a slightly clearer view of the stitching line I'm following. It's faint but it's there. Also I did not fold under the tabs until I was almost on them. I made sure to keep my needle in the down position while doing this as well.

Just a couple more shots of me stitching these tabs down.

You want to make sure and try to get the tabs to fold as flat as possible and have the tops line up as much as possible so that your new header on the curtain doesn't look flunky.

So here's the curtains hanging. You can see the shadow of the tabs a little bit, but when you move away from the window you can't tell at all. It doesn't help that the white cotton shows everything as well.

Here's the view of the back of the curtain - looking up at the curtain rod. The rod slides nicely along the new back tabs, but it doesn't  hang limply. I also did not cut those tabs in case I wanted to undo this alteration in the future. I probably never will, but you never know.

Now for the fine print. When you buy an 84" curtain and you convert it from tab top to back tab you will lose about 3 inches. I avoided this, because the curtains I bought from Ikea were unfinished at the bottom, so I measured down 84" from the header I was going to be creating. Just an FYI. :)

One more of the finished product. :)

Hope you guys enjoyed this super simple tutorial!

Have a great day,
Heather

Ok, so another song is in my head. Leaving on a jet plane.....don't know when I'll be back again....
Remember that scene in Armageddon? Love it when Michael Clark Duncan and Steve Buscemi join in. :) In fact I'm going to share it with y'all. :)
There. Wasn't that nice? Don't much care for Mr. Affleck, but I do love that his oldest is named Violet, and she's about Dev's age. :)  Ok so I have majorly strayed from my point, but you guys are used to that aren't you? Ah well, at least the song has something to do with the content of the post. I was able to go get some more Cherry Red thread and finish up those curtains of Devlin's! Yay! It only took twice as long as it should have because I ran out of thread! Whoopie!

So remember when I told you guys that I was working on an even simpler curtain transformation that I would show you guys today? You know....when I said that yesterday? Well you know what they say about the best laid plans....
Yea....It was that kind of day. I ran out of thread after only getting one curtain up. Hopefully tomorrow I can run out to get some more. Otherwise...well...otherwise you're going to see the ghetto pictures I had planned putting up until I remembered that I had yet to show off Bet's creation! My grandmother made me a roman shade for the window above my sink! Unfortunately I don't know how she did it, because I've never made one, but I do know that we went to Walmart and I picked out a chocolate suede thermal panel (for $15) and she created gorgeousness!

So before Thanksgiving I got an itch. I wanted to change the window treatments in the family room, but I had a small problem - I didn't know how I wanted to change them. I knew I wanted something casual and relaxed, but I also wanted it to still be a little formal. Not totally formal, but a little eensy bit formal. So I took a couple of months to think about it.

Then on a trip to Hancock I found the 'perfect' fabric. Only it wasn't as perfect as I thought it was. I mean it is perfect because it has all of the right colors but the background was the color of a natural linen. The fabric was more perfect for summer curtains (do you see the foreshadowing of a future post here?), and it would not match the curtains I wanted to alter. The curtains that were up in the family room were originally from our master bedroom. They're just a woven chocolate brown. Really nothing to write home, but oh the potential of these panels.

The winter mantle is still up in these pictures. Kind of tells you how long ago I took everything down.