Measuring an Opening to Make Tab Top Curtains

Series Summary

People have been sewing their own clothing, bedding, and upholstery since practically the beginning of time. In fact, sewing predates the weaving of cloth, and was nearly universal among Paleolithic human populations. Sewing is the basic act of using a needle and thread to stitch together cloth, leather, furs or other material to produce a variety of household items. Today, most sewing is done by industrial sewing machines, however many people continue to sew for themselves, repairing clothes, mending seams, or making simple items like curtains or tablecloths.

In this free video series, our expert will show you how to make tab top curtains. Making this easy and popular curtain pattern is a breeze with the help our experts step by step instructions. You will get easy to follow instructions for measuring, cutting and pinning the curtain fabric, as well as tips on sewing the seams and hems for your tab top curtains. You will also get advice on making a curtain liner and sewing it to your main curtain fabric. Finally, learn how to make tabs to hang the curtain and install the curtain for your window or door space. If you are looking for a simple but useful sewing project, let our expert show you how to make this decorative tab top curtains.

Video Transcript

"Hi, welcome to Expert Village, I'm Gretchen Soares with Butterfly Boutique. Okay, so today we're going to be making tab top curtains and the first thing we have to do is to measure the opening or the area that we want it to do that in. And this is what we're making a replacement for today, so we're going to measure how wide it is. Forty-three inches and how long we're going to want it. I measure all the way to the floor and then we'll back off when we're figuring the cutting. So this is eighty-two inches. So this opening is eighty-two by forty-three. The most important part is the width, so we are at forty-three inches from bar to bar. And then we're going to measure from the floor up to the bar and when we figure out layout, we're going to pin up to we don't care where it lands right now. We're just going to measure from the floor up and the surface is eighty-two. I like to double measure because it's always better to measure twice then cut once. So again forty-three by eighty-two."