How To Make Insulated Curtains

The first thing you do is get your curtain fabric stitched up into however many widths you are using and put flat face down onto the table you are working on. You do exactly the same with the inter-liner and exactly the same with the lining, at the same time, the lining, you're going to hem it by machine so that it's ready to install once you've put the inter-liner and liner together. The hand stitching of the inter-liner and the curtain is very important because you don't want the inter-liner to move about.

So we need to hand stitch the edge of the inter-liner to the curtain itself with small stitches using the same color thread as the fabric or a close as a color as you can and give the curtain what I call a chicken's foot stitch, nice big ones, and that will secure the edge of the inter-lining. Don't use double cotton because it will show on the other side. It is a good idea to single stitch the inter-liner to the base of the curtain fabric so that it doesn't move up and down and so that it keeps within hem when in use.

With the inter-liner, we need to interlock it along the curtain vertically. Using the same color thread and a single thread, we actually stitch down the middle of the curtain, nice big stitches, not too tight and certainly not looping it. As straight as you can down the middle of the curtain and every 50 cm's on a small curtain would be a good idea, and every 75 cm on a longer curtain is fine.

Once we've stitched the curtain inter-liner to the fabric, it's time to make the edges. So we turn the edges in, pin them, and give them nice long tailored stitches down the edge making sure that the inter-liner is nice and flat before you actually do that. And towards the edge of curtain fabric about 6 cm in, you do your nice long firm stitches.

Make sure that you only go into the inter-liner; don't go right through the fabric because these stitches will then show on the face of your curtain which would not be attractive. We're now ready to do the hem of the curtain and the corner which is an important part. It's a good idea to trim off the inter-liner on the corner because otherwise it can become rather bulky and trim off the edge so that you can turn in the hem without it making it too bulky.

We make the hem beyond the stitches that we've made to keep it in place. Beyond those stitches, we make the hem. You can just see them, they will be on back of the curtain so you won't notice them and we make it nice and flat and then we turn in that little piece that we had exposed beyond the inner liner and we pin it whichever way, to both or to one only.

With the corner, you tuck in the corner itself thereby making a 45 degree angled corner. You then tuck in the side corner. Bring that up and give it a nice edge.

Pin it down and pin the end. That is then all hand-stitched. Not that size, we want a nice hemming stitch and we're going to use the same color as the fabric again.

If you want to put a weight in the corner, you slip it in before you pin it, stitch it down and then pin it back and hand stitch along that edge making sure you do not catch both the fabrics. We're stitching the hem, tucking the knot in, catching the inter-liner only and giving them medium sized stitches, not too tight but nice and secure evenly spaced stitches. So, you've made your curtain with the inter-liner on the fabric.

It's then after that, that you put the lining on as normally and you also interlock the lining to go along with the inter-liner only, not to both fabrics, and you hand stitch the lining to the edge at the same time, making sure that you don't catch all the fabrics. And you use a cream colored thread that matches the lining, not the fabric of the curtain. And then, the heading is put on and that's how you make insulated curtains. .