I love floor-to-ceiling shower curtains. I especially love them in small bathrooms because it just makes a small bathroom feel more grand. A few months ago I shared my moodboard/plan for my guest bathroom. I really fell in love with this ikat print from Liora Manne.
via Liora Manne
It’s actually a rug. I am pretty sure there is not a fabric version but I used it as my inspiration to find something similar. My best friend and I went fabric shopping awhile back at our local fabric store. It’s not my favorite store that is 45 minutes away, but my town has a quilting fabric store. Its inventory is mostly small printed patterns that would look good on an old-fashioned quilt, but sometimes you can find some designer/modern fabrics. They do have a ton of great baby fabric so we were in the store for my friend’s little girls room. We stopped in the clearance room and I found this for $2.00 a yard.
I LOVED it! I don’t I could have found anything so similar to my inspiration fabric rug I immediately bought 6 yards of it for $12.00 (plus change for tax). I went home and I grabbed two shower curtain rods that I already had. We had one for the guest bath already and one that we used in the master bathroom until we found our shower doors. I hung both of the tension rods up side-by-side, resembling a double curtain rod.
You can’t even seen the second one behind the first from this angle.
Earlier I had found two fabric shower liners (you know the kind that is water proof) at a thrift store for $1 a pop. We have a lot of hotels where I live and when they remodel they drop off their stuff at thrift stores or have their own sale. The curtains looked completely clean but I washed them with bleach and hot water. I sewed two together and hemmed it to make a long shower liner. I hung the with plastic shower rings on the back tension rod.
Now it was time to make the shower curtain. I decided to be a little unconventional. I wanted to frame my shower like a window. This meant that I needed two panels. I also knew the panels were going to be strictly an embellishment. I wanted the curtain to hide the rings and the liner so I didn’t want to put them on clips. I decided to sew tabbed curtains like these. Tabbed curtains can be time-consuming to sew and I was ready for it until I opened up my closet and found some old Ikea Curtains I purchased. These very sheer curtains were on sale for $5 a pop because they were discontinued a few years ago when I purchased them. I didn’t really have a reason but I had a gift card and I would rather spend $5 of my own money than leave $6 left on the card at the register. I live 7 hours away from Ikea so it is an annual visit, and I can’t just come back and use $6. So, to max out the card, I grabbed these curtains…more for the fabric of the curtains than the curtains themselves. When I saw them I had an “Aha” moment. Since I wanted them for fabric I could cut off the tabs and sew them onto my fabric. So I cut off the tabs:
I had to cut a few out of the middle because my curtains were not as wide as these Ikea curtains.
I made sure that I had 1 inch on each side for the side hem. I pinned it 1 inche below the top of my fabric.
(sorry this picture didn’t turnout great. You can see that I cute a little above and below the tabs so when i folded over the top of my fabric it would be sewn in the hem.)
I folded the top of my fabric down 1 inch and folded it over again (the top of te Ikea curtains tabs are now under the hem of my curtain) and sewed them. I them folded the sides 1 inch and then folded it again one inch to get the side hems. The ends of row of tabs were folded into the hem and sewn. I hemmed the bottom and my curtains were done. Here they are hung up in my bathroom. You can barely see it but there is teal in this tribal/ikat pattern. It really makes the mirror pop.
Here is what the shower looks like in use. The fabric liner easily opens and closes.
I always see old and ugly curtains in thrift stores for .50¢-$2.00. I will now be tempted to buy them if they have tabs just for the tabs. Here is a picture from the back:
The curtains can open and close but we never need them to. My bathroom is almost all coming together. I have a few more posts left. Sorry if my posts are so late this week. These are the last two weeks of the busiest part of my job and…I am having a hard time not using the little amount of free time I have not watching the olympics. I am so addicted!
Thanks for reading,
Jennifer
