D.I.Y Free People Inspired Curtain

For those of you who have been to a Free People store, you know that they have really cool patchwork curtains as the dressing room door. Every time I go in there I always make some sort of comment about how cute they are with their raw edges. Over Christmas break I decided to make one of my own for my closet at school! Below I will explain the steps I took to make it and attach some pictures as well.

1. Measure the size of the space where you will be hanging the curtain.

Like I said, my curtain was made for my closet at school so it’s relatively small. I was home when I decided to make it so I had no clue what the dimensions were…oops!

2. Decide how big you want your squares to be (mine are 3x3).

This is a matter of preference. If you were to make a curtain for your windows at home or something on a much larger scale, I would probably make the squares a lot bigger just to make it easier.

3. Do the math to determine how many squares you will need (I had well over 400).

Originally, I planned on 392 squares based on a rough estimate of what I though the closet size was. I ended up with almost 500 squares so I suggest cutting out more than you think you will need.

4. Pick your fabric.

This was really easy for me, as my mom had tons of random types of fabric that she let me use. I just picked out 18 different kinds that I liked the most and used those. Again, you can choose as many or as few different types of fabric, it’s just a matter of preference.

5. Iron the fabric.

Ironing the fabric makes cutting it so much easier and it will look better in the end anyway.

6. Figure out how many squares of each type of fabric you will need.

Depending on how many different types of fabric you have, how big you want your squares, and how big the space is that it will be covering, you will have to do the math (yuck!) to figure out how many squares you will need per type of fabric.

7. Cut out the squares (I used a rotary cutter and it worked really well!)

I would not have been able to cut out the fabric using scissors. It took me a really long time to cut out the squares using the rotary cutter which is much simpler.

8. Sew the squares together, one row at a time.

This is pretty easy once you get started. You place the squares face to face and sew along the side where you want them to meet and repeat that until you are done the row.

9. Sew the rows together.

Once all of the rows are done, you place the rows face to face and sew all the way across the two rows and repeat that process until you are done.

10. Wash the curtain (on hot) and dry it in the dryer for softness and a semi-wrinkled look.

I washed the curtain to give it more of the wrinkled and raw edge look just to mimic the way the Free People curtain looks.

11. Sew a strip of thicker fabric to the top of the curtain for extra support.

I used a strip of a burlap type material. It was just something I had lying around and it worked really well!

12. Put hooks on the top and slide it onto a curtain rod.

I chose to use a spring curtain rod so that it sits inside my closet rather than above it which turned out well for the purpose

Here are some pictures of the back to show the raw look of the edges, similar to Free People's.

“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23). We cannot forget The One who gave us our gifts and talents so let all that we do and all that we create, honor the Lord.