Live From B5: DIY Drop Cloth Curtains

My living room window is huge and faces the road, so I knew that I was going to need curtains or blinds to close at night (no one likes being a fish in a fish bowl!) The only problem was, the patio door is flanked by two windows, and when combined, they are essentially an entire wall. Here's one side...picture another window on the other side of the door.

I had no idea how I was going to cover 10.5 feet of window. I thought about doing 4 panels of curtains, one on each frame - two on the outside and two for the door, like the model home. Sorry the picture is so dark but just to give an idea...

But I really didn't like the idea of having curtains in the centre, or having the light blocked by excess fabric.

I couldn't find any curtains in store that were big enough to just have two panels on the outside. I also knew that buying enough fabric cover the windows was going to be WAY too expensive to try to do on my own. Then I remembered I had read something somewhere at some point in time, about using drop cloths as fabric. They're a neutral colour, they aren't too expensive, and they're big. So I headed over to the hardware store and picked up one of these bad boys.

I also ordered a yard of the Soho - Kiwi fabric from Tonic Living to use as strips of pattern on the cloth. It's more green than the sample appears here.

Then, it's just like you are making regular curtains! You spread the drop cloth out, and cut it in half. Then the two side strips of the fabric were sewn to the sides.

I love grommet curtains, so I picked up a few do-it-yourself grommet packs at Fabricland. Basically, you measure how far apart you want the grommets to be, trace and cut out the hole provided in the kit, then the two pieces of the grommet snap together. It's a little more complicated than that though since you have to take into account seam allowances and how high the curtains will hang off the ground. Here's a handy link that we used by Joann Fabric that sure saved the day! You can find it here.

You always need to use an even number of grommets, otherwise your curtains won't hang properly.

And here's the finished product!

I love that I only need two panels to cover the whole window! And best of all, these huge curtains cost less than $60! I didn't wash the drop cloth prior to working with it since I couldn't afford for it to shrink. I needed its maximum length. But you could definitely wash it before hand which might help take out some of the stiffness of the cotton canvas.