Wardrobe Curtains, or how I tamed the eyesore

Let's be honest. Full length curtains aren't the easiest thing to photograph in a confined space. So this post may not be filled with the prettiest pictures you've ever seen, but you'll at least get a chance to see the idea.

We have a stand alone wardrobe in our master bedroom- it's not particularly pretty, but it does the job. In our last move, one of the doors came off, and we were unable to get it back on. For months (okay, years), we had one door on, one door off- and the door that was there was a weird mesh- think fly screen on a wardrobe (is the idea of fly screen universal? It doesn't really exist in the UK, whereas it's everywhere in Australia- I don't remember seeing much in the USA, either).

I had the idea to remove the 2nd door completely, and then cover the front of the wardrobe with curtains. Rather than installing hooks, I used an extendable shower curtain rail- the curtain isn't heavy, so weight bearing capabilities weren't high on the priority list, and this way it's quick and easy to take down, if necessary.

The curtains came together quickly, I started on a Friday evening, then did another hour or two on Saturday morning. If anyone is interested, I could do up a quick tutorial, but in essence I just added tabs to the top of two long pieces of fabric, then used some accent fabric to brighten up the grey, and hemmed. The top band of accent is mostly decorative, but also functions to hide the raw seams holding the tabs on. The bottom band is more functional- my grey fabric (a plain quilting cotton I bought a month of so back intending to use for a quilt, but decided was too dark once I got it home) was too short, so I added a band of decorative fabric to lengthen the curtains. I also used additional grey fabric to create a false hem along the bottom- again, because my fabric was too short lengthwise, but I had left over from the width I'd cut off.

This is such an easy project- if you can sew a straight line, you can easily make curtains. Because of the odd design of our wardrobe, the curtain doesn't hang quite as flat as I'd like, but I think I can live with that. I recommend hanging the curtains for a couple of days before you hem, to allow them to settle- then measure from the ground up, not the top down, but it really shouldn't make too much difference as you're unlikely to be cutting on the grain, and they're not so heavy they'll stretch out a lot.

Have you ever made simple curtains to solve a problem like this? I'm tempted to make smaller versions for our bedroom windows, now.