Grand Little Place

Off the rack curtains often fit the budget, but not the quality or look that many of us are wanting.  When you learn these simple tweaks for how to hang curtains with hooks your curtains will instantly look better.  Paired with the addition of drapery weights curtains will hang straighter too!

 

Y’all have been with me during my very-first-world-problem of my living room curtains.  But even after finally dismantling and replacing the curtain rods one thing was missing – the curtains.  When we bought the house we inherited professional drapery (and alllllllll the hardware that came with it).  Because I’m impatient and couldn’t stand looking at the mess of drapes I ruined a pair of them by washing them.  Yes, I know I’m an idiot. That left us with two pairs of drapes that matched on the side windows and a bare rod over the patio window.  I was trying to figure out what to do when I found a near-ish match of the drapes at a thrift store one day.  They weren’t exact but I went ahead and got them so that at least I had something there while I figured out the rod and curtain situation.  Over time we realized that someday we do want professional drapes put back into the living room.  There is one thing stopping us though – budget.  Real drapes cost real money, yo.  And while I can say that I know it is a skill and you get what you pay for, right now that dream can’t be a priority.  I’ve got waaaaaaay to many things that have to get done before I drop the money on drapes.  So I’ve been left with a choice – keep living with the mish-mash of drapery that we currently have or to find inexpensive off the rack curtain panels that will work for now.  This post is all about how I used off the rack curtain panels to make them feel more like drapes.

In my living room I needed 84″ panels.  I know that this is unusual these days for a blogger to seek out the shorter length but because of the ceiling beams in my living room I couldn’t have gone any longer than that.  I looked at curtains in every price point but at the end of the day decided that I wanted to spend as little as possible because these aren’t my forever curtains and I really DO have some bigger projects coming up that I want to spend my money on.  Armed with a gift card I hit up all of my local Home Goods, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx stores but couldn’t find panels I liked enough that had enough of the panels I needed.  For my living room I needed a minimum of 8 panels.  There is a Tuesday Morning near my house so I popped in to see what they had.  They actually have a large curtain section that has a variety of colors and lengths.  I ended up finding 8 panels in a plain off white fabric.  What is nice about stores like Tuesday Morning & Home Goods is that they sell curtains in sets of 2.  That was a big help when trying to spend as little as possible on this in between update.

Before moving into this house I never really paid attention to what the difference between drapery and curtains are.  Now that I’ve been battling drapery for 3 years I am well versed.  I am not a drapery professional so I’m just here to share what I’ve figured out along the way.  The biggest difference between drapes and curtains is quality.  Drapes are usually hand made, not always, by a seamstress or other sewing professional.  Drapes are usually lined, weighted and always have a a buckram header.  Buckram is a stiff starched material that is sewn into the header part of the drapes and can be manipulated into different styles of pleats and headings.  Curtains do not have this and therefore are generally more casual.  Drapes are also usually hung with drapery hooks (also called drapery pins), whereas curtains are made to hang directly on the rod with a rod pocket, back tab, grommet or other hanging method.

Now that we’ve covered the differences between drapes and curtains let’s talk about what all of us middle-class-regular-house people can do to get the best results from our off the shelf curtain panels.  You basically need 3 supplies:  curtain rings (preferably with an eyelet), drapery hooks, and drapery weights.

Most of us are familiar with what a curtain ring is.  It is a ring that slides onto the curtain rod and many times has a little clip hanging off of the bottom of it so you can clip your curtain panel to it.  I’ve used a lot of rings with clips over the years but for my living room I knew that wasn’t an option.  Those curtain rings are totally fine, but coming from the previously discussed drapery situation I knew I needed something cleaner looking than how the clip looks.  I also have been learning how to use drapery hooks, and they don’t work with the rings with clips.

You may be reading this and thinking, “Ok, but what is a drapery hook?”.  It’s ok, I didn’t know either until I inherited a mountain of them with this house.  A drapery hook is a little piece of metal that can be hooked through a curtain ring with eyelet and pinned directly into the buckram heading of a drape.  One end points up and has a sharp point – that is the side that gets put into the curtain header.  The side that is blunt and points down goes through the curtain ring.

So knowing how and why drapery hooks are used I decided I would attempt to figure out how to hang curtain panels with hooks.  I wanted to try this method because even though back tabs do hang nicely on the bar the length wouldn’t have been right.  I needed the extra length of the ring for the curtains to be the right distance from the floor.  I also wanted to see if using the the drapery hooks would give the header a higher end look than just hanging them.

I laid out my curtain panels and got to work inserting the drapery hooks.  I chose to use a drapery hooks everywhere there was a back tab.  As you can see these off the shelf panels do not have a buckram header and are a bit of a floppy fabric.  I figured that the spacing of the back tabs would be even and that the extra fabric would give the hooks more  stability.

After all of the hooks were in place I went ahead and threaded the hooks through the eyelet of my curtain rings.  The curtain rings I am using on my bars are from Ikea and are a little different than standard rings.  These are wood with a little piece you can add on that the hooks goes into.  I’ve not seen other rings like this, and these I believe are being discontinued, so you should probably look for the normal wood curtain rings with eyelet screwed in it.

Once your hooks are in the header and added to the rings your top should look like this:

The other thing that will help off the rack curtains is adding drapery weights to the hem.  If you’ve ever looked at your curtain and saw them ‘winging’ to the sides it’s because they are so light weight.  By adding a drapery weight they will naturally lay straighter and you’ll avoid the odd curtain wisps to the sides.  Now remember I’m not a professional and I’m just a gal fluffing her house.  I’m also not a perfectionist about everything, so I’m going to tell you how I did this and you can make the choice about what’s right for you. 🙂

Adding drapery weights is super simple.  You will need a seam ripper or something to open just a few stitches.  Run your hand to the edge of the bottom hem and using the seam ripper open up about a 1 inch section of the hem.

Insert your drapery weight.  Repeat this on the other side of the curtain panel (each panel should have 2 weights, one on each bottom corner).

If you are into sewing then bust out your needle and thread and stitch up the hem where you opened it.  I have two kids and very little time or patience to sit and stitch teeny openings on 8 curtain panels so if you’re Klassy like me dig out your stapler and throw a staple there.  Or if you don’t care at all then leave it open.  Either way your hooks and weights are done and your curtains are ready!

Once your weights are in the bottom hem this is how your curtains will fall:

If ya’ll have stuck with me through this post you deserve an award.  The before and after here isn’t amazing, from far away you probably can’t even see a difference.  BUT when I’m in the room opening and closing my curtains it’s different and it doesn’t drive me insane every time I’m sitting in here….so I think that’s a win?

Drapes before:

Off the rack curtain panels hung with hooks, rings and weights after:

How to hang curtain panels with hooks to hang like drapery:

• Gather supplies:  curtain panels, curtain rings with eyelet, drapery hooks, seam ripper, drapery weights
• Using your drapery hooks insert a hook into the heading of your curtain panel at regular intervals (everywhere you want to use a ring, normally panels use 7-9 rings).
• Thread drapery hooks through the eyelet of the curtain ring
• Hang panels
• Using your seam ripper open the top edge of the bottom hem about 1 inch on each end of the curtain panel.
• Drop in 1 drapery weight into each end of the curtain panel
• Sew close hem.  Or if you’re lazy like me leave it open  For even more “I don’t have time for this” points use your stapler to staple it up.  No one is going to notice and if they do it sounds like they have enough time to come over and stitch them up for you 😉

My curtains have been hung with hooks and rings for the past 5 months and they still hang as straight as the day I put them up.  I’m so happy I went ahead and made the swap with these inexpensive curtain panels!

Don’t forget to pin!