Striped Burlap Curtains

What's better than burlap and stripes? Nothing. Except if you put them together :)

I don't know what made me do this project. Maybe boredom. Maybe a little bit of my decorating I NEED TO DO SOMETHING OR ELSE kicked in. I get both of those a lot. lol.

The sad thing? I was perfectly happy with the burlap curtains in my front room. Especially after I added a little white fabric on the inside of them to offer a dash of contrast. They were perfect. But I couldn't leave well enough alone.

So, I took down one of the panels (I still have the other, so it won't be too expensive to redo) and bought a contrasting white burlap. I then on a whim, decided to make stripes for my front room. Add a little interest to the somewhat blahness of it. 

So, to start off. I cut six 'panels' from the brown burlap at 15.5 inches each. Six of the same size from the white burlap, and then two 18 inch pieces from the white burlap to use for the top pieces.The top pieces needed to be a little longer since they were going to be folded down in order to hang them. It was a lot of cutting. Especially since I wanted the cut to follow the stitch of the burlap. I made my self go cross eye a few times I was concentrating so hard on it. lol.

Once the sections were cut, it was rather easy from there. I just laid one white piece on top of a brown piece. Lined up the edges meticulously, and pinned them.

Then I sent the edge through my serger. I love this baby! It works wonders on burlap :) You can still do this project even if you don't have a serger, just send it through your sewing machine. Just be careful to keep the edges looking clean.

This, as you can see from above, creates a lot of little burlap 'dust'. You can imagine what this pile looked like after sewing 12 seams together :)

Next was to hem the edges. If you get the good burlap, at least I call it the good burlap, you won't have to hem the edges  because they are already really nice looking. The brown burlap was the good burlap. The white burlap was a different story. You can see how the edges were in one of the pictures above. So, I had to hem the edges. This was annoying, but easy and only took a few minutes.

After all the pieces were sewn together and the edges hemmed, I used the same technique to hang them as I did the burlap curtains that were in my front room.Click here for the tutorial.

and as you can see....these didn't end up in my front room...even though they were made to go there. I made the mistake of placing them in my living room instead....and fell in love.

I don't have the heart to take them down. They just look like they belonged there. Of course, the problem now is that they are completely and utterly see through. I didn't care so much about that in the front room since I just used them as side panels and hardly ever closed them. But as for the living room. They are constantly closed. Especially at night. And of course, at night is when you can really really see through them.

So, my thoughts are to just hang my white curtains back up behind these ones, and the problem is solved! Or I could make a lining for these, but thats just more work when I can solve it in two seconds the other way :)

I was going for an all white theme in this room. Kinda. But now that's blown with these curtains :) lol oh well. I like how they play off the colors on the subway art, and pull in the color from the mantel and wood by the fireplace.

They also mimic the lines of the bookshelves. It just seems really cohesive. The hubs thought it looked nautical. Like were at the beach. I'm thinking I like it either way. If this is nautical, by all means, then I love nautical :)

Here's the before with the white curtains:

And the after:

It ties into the colors of the pillows really well also.

As for the cost? I got the burlap for about $2.50 a yard. Used a little under 4 yards for the white, and about 3 yards for the brown burlap. Since I already had the brown burlap on hand, this only cost me about $10! But if you need to buy all the burlap, it should only run you about $18 or so.

Maybe I'll take my chances and hang them up in the front room and see how they look in there. If not, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and get another burlap curtain panel for that room :) cuz as much as one panel hanging looks awesome in there right now, it definitely cannot stay that way. lol