using gathering tape for curtains
A few months ago I posted photos of our living room. I received a few questions about the gathered curtains, so I thought I’d {finally!} show you how I made them.
When I visited a friend in Texas, she had just had her living room curtains using gathering tape and I fell in love. She is starting a new blog very soon and I can’t wait for her to share her house with everyone … it is amazing. So thanks, Christi, for letting me steal your idea!
So this is gathering tape. You should be able to find it by the yard at your local fabric store. It is basically a mesh ribbon with two strings woven through it. When you sew it to fabric and pull the strings, it creates a nice gather. It comes in many different widths {mine is 1 inch}.
I used my favorite IKEA curtains {they are long, cheap and a nice weight}, cut off the top tabs and then made a deep hem {approximately 4 inches with another 1 inch turned under}. Depending on how high you want your fabric to stand-up above the gather, you can adjust the hem.
Then you will stitch the gathering tape to the fabric along the top edge of the tape.
Now add a small stitch {back and forth a few times on the sewing machine} to tack the bottom of the tape down.
Hook drapery pins through the tape in equal places where it will be hung on rings {in my case, I used seven rings, so I took the width of the curtains and divided into 7}. You can get drapery pins at your fabric store, or online here.
Now pull the top string until you have your desired ruffliness to the curtains, then make a knot to hold in place.
Hook the drapery pins to your curtain rings {I used these rings}.
And you are finished!
I was hanging these velvet curtains in my office {beware … it’s being rearranged again}
and noticed that they also use gathering tape. Why I have never noticed this, I am not sure.
So I put them up to see the difference between using it and not. On the left, I pulled the strings to gather:
and on the right, I did not.
It does make a difference in holding the gathers tight. I am not crazy about the rod going through the middle of the gathers, so I will probably do the same method in here as with the living room curtains.
I searched and searched for other tutorials on how to make gathered curtains and came up pretty empty-handed. I did find these three images from drapery-making companies in the UK. Apparently this style is more common in England.
I also learned that the technical name is not gathered curtains, but rather gathered heading with stand-up frill. Fancy, schmancy.
