diy pinch pleat curtains

This project was a happy accident for me. It came about because I made my friends curtains last week and I had black rings and a brown rod. Even though I would probably be the only person alive to tell I wanted to hide it a little bit. Since her curtains are not properly hung yet I thought I would show you on a pair of my curtains. Sorry about the night photos :)

In pretty much no time at all I changed my curtains 

          from this................................................................to this

Not too shabby I'd say. Plus, it's another free makeover for me. I love free makeovers! 

You will need ring clips for this. I buy mine at target but any will do.

I started by removing all my clips and measuring out how far I wanted the pinch pleats to be apart. And then messed around with the size of the pleat. Too big. Too small. Just right. This step is purely preference on your part. Mine ended up being just over an inch because that's what I liked best in the end.

There's no real science to it but you do have to have 3 folds. One in front, two in the back. The ring clips are not going to hold much of the length of the back pleats so keep that in mind while making your folds. Then I clamped down at the bottom of my seam in the back of the curtain. Depending on your fabric you may want to iron the pleats. Mine was pretty heavy and worked well.

 All done with this panel

I may end up filling up these holes with some makeshift tubing to give them more structure. I'm going to live with it a little and see. Here's a closeup.

In the end the difference was big to me and kind of small to my husband. But he did notice a difference without me saying "it's the curtains honey" always a plus when I ask him to "come see!"

It gives them much more shape and looks a bit more custom. I'm sure it will tide me over until I get my custom ones sewn. Here they are in the daylight. I need to get my bum to a photography class stat!

Imagine what this could do for a pair of ugly tab top curtains! Just cut off the tabs and add your pleats in the back. I think there are endless possibilities with this one.