Notes on designing curtains with rings

This is a post where I point out things to future Alice which should have been obvious to past Alice when she bought curtain fabric for her spare room.

For context, I am making curtains with 40mm metal eyelets at the top.  I need metal eyelets because I am interlining with blackout fabric, and making a polycotton lining too, plus buckram.  This is quite a thickness to expect shonky plastic rings to withstand.  Therefore, I purchased some badass tools to insert metal eyelets from Hanolex.  It involves the biggest hammer I may ever own.  The break even point in tool investment seems to be when you are making more than one set of eyelet curtains, especially when you take into account the recorded delivery postage in sending your beautifully handmade curtains off to someone else to butcher in the eyelets for you.

I like to use the blackout as an interlining rather than a lining fabric.  When making curtains, one tends not to take the lining all the way to the curtain edge.  I find the blackout fabric to be quite stiff compared to some fashion fabrics used for the front of the curtain, so when using it as a simple lining, you end up with floppy leading edges.  I've even seen this done on sample curtains in a well-to-do posh national chain of stores.  Eugh!  Therefore, I like to use the blackout as an interlining, cut to the finished curtain size and tacked inside, making all the curtain the same stiffness.  I then use a thin cotton or polycotton to line the curtain.

Designing your curtain

Here follow some complicated trade-offs and calculations that I won't repeat here, but consider the following constraints:

1. For a pair of curtains, each curtain needs to be at least twice the width of the window area it has to cover.  E.g. for a 2m wide window with a pair of curtains, each curtain needs to be 2m wide or more.
2. You need an even number of rings, and Mr Google suggests typical spacings for 40mm rings are 16-18cm.  The spacing you choose is to some extent determined by how far your curtain pole stands off the wall, which should be just a little more than half your ring spacing.  Clearly if you have M rings, your total curtain width will need to be M x ring spacing.  This allows you a bit of leeway to play around with the number of rings, the ring spacing and the total curtain width, subject to the next constraint.
3. Typical fabric widths might be 140mm, so you may need several drops of fabric in order to get your total curtain width.  Consider where the join should be between two drops: it ought to fall in a furrow between two rings, i.e. with an even number of rings each side of it.  Make sure your ring spacing and number of rings allows you to get this seam positioned correctly, bearing in mind the width of your fabric (which is fixed).  It's not as easy as you'd think.
4. With all of the above, make sure you're allowing for turnings at the edges on the front fabric!  On top of the finished curtain size, I allow 5" at the top, 3.5" at the bottom, and 2.5" at each side.  I allow a 1/2" seam to join drops.

Having solved that headache, you might want to consider where you place the seams between drops of blackout interlining and polycotton lining.  I didn't want a stiff section in my curtain, so I plan to stagger the seams.  Since it's the next stiffest fabric, I'll place the join in the blackout lining in a different furrow from the front fabric (with an even number of rings each side).  The polycotton lining is relatively thin and floppy, and in any case is on the reverse, so I'll place the join mid-way between that of the front fabric and blackout, even though this is on a projecting fold.

The narrowest drop of front fabric probably looks best toward the outer edge of your window on each curtain.

For lining, I plan for it to appear on the reverse of the curtain as a neat rectangle coming 4.5" down from the top, 2" in on each side, and 2" up from the bottom.  I allow 1/2" for turning on the top and sides, but 2.5" for creating a deep 2" machined hem along the bottom.

I will use 5" buckram along the top edge for stiffening, and I expect to place my eyelets with their midpoints 2.25" from the top of the curtain.  The outer two eyelets are spaced by half the eyelet spacing from the curtain edges.

Matching obvious patterns

I should have unrolled several meters of the fabric from the roll and stood well back before buying.  What I thought was a lovely swirly pattern turns out to have VERY obvious repeats which really ought to be matched.  What is more, my guestimate of yardage in the shop was pretty good at first sight: I bought 6.5m, and my later calculations show I need four drops of 62" each, which is 6.3m with no pattern matching.  Clearly this is very frugal of me, but I am now cursing myself for not allowing enough for pattern matching.

When you are standing in the shop with a winging toddler, how much extra fabric should you buy for pattern matching?  Turns out to be quite simple.  Firstly, measure the vertical pattern repeat.  Then buy enough for the number of drops (N), plus N times the pattern repeat.  So for my fabric, I should have bought 4 x 62", plus 4 x 24" (because 24" is the enormous pattern repeat distance).  So I ought to have purchased just over 8.8m to be safe.  That's quite a difference from the 6.3m!  I now need to attempt to buy another 2.2m+ of the same fabric, six months after my original purchase, if they still have it.  ARGH.

Spooky shirt

It's Hallowe'en soon, and the onslaught of compulsory dressing-up parties for toddlers.  It seems like in the US, any costume goes, however in old blighty we stick to the traditional witches, pumpkins, skeletons and perhaps a zombie or vampire or two.  Sadly it's much cheaper to buy a shiny scratchy polyester outfit from the supermarket than it is to buy the fabric and make your own wonky creation.  That makes me a bit sad, mostly because I can't justify 1m of orange cotton on economy grounds.

Note the sticker from a pumpkin he has applied to his tummy.  Also, this is his "smile" face (eyes are shut).

Nevertheless, Toddler Button gets his own special shirt for the occasion, because it turns out you can just about squeeze my age 2-3 shirt pattern from a piece of 75cm wide 1m cotton for £2.20 off ebay (free postage!).  Here, squeeze means really squeeze: I had to piece the under-collar from two scraps of fabric to make this baby work.

I thought spools of black and white thread never ran out in this house, but it turns out they do run out if you don't keep buying them.  Boo hoo.  Therefore, because I was light on time and thread, we have minimal top-stitching and some of the buttonholes might be stitched with grey/brown thread on the reverse.  Also I was short of one orange button, so we have a different button friend lurking on the collar stand.

The bits all over my floor are pegs.  Thanks, toddler.

I'm sorry that my child is not going as a "thing", but he will look cool (I hope) with his spiders and trick-or-treating skeletons.  I wanted to get shiny sliver and black spiderweb fabric, but it's probably as well it was twice the price because it would have been a bit Liberace.

Model wears his new shirt over a long-sleeve t-shirt.  Did you really think I'd have enough fabric for long sleeves?!  He's also pretty pleased about the buttons, because he can now say "Orange!".

Next year, maybe I should make him this outfit?!  Ha ha!

Free peg bag pattern

I'm feeling in a generous mood.  So generous that I've digitised my peg bag pattern for you, for free.  You're welcome!

Download the pattern here.  (It's a pdf file.)

The pattern pages should be printed on 6 sheets of A4 paper.  (I'm from England, that's how we roll.)  Remember to set "scaling 100%" or "none"  or whatever when you print, as usual when you have print-at-home sewing patterns.  There are red stars everywhere which should align beautifully when you tape it together properly: there are red letters to help you match pages properly.  You should find yourself taping it into a 3 x 2page block which contains three pattern pieces, the largest of which is about 43cm from top to bottom.

Cut around the solid lines.  I have included lightly dotted lines to show the stitching lines: the seam allowance is 1/4" on the outside edges and the opening edges are left raw for you to finish with bias binding.  I recommend 3/4" binding which you can make yourself.

I'm not generous enough to provide instructions, but I'm sure you can work it out.  I will pass on a few options though:

1.  Use just one fabric layer, or a quilted sandwich as I did.  Finish the dart edges and all raw inside edges with bias binding (not just the opening).

2.  Be a bit clever with separate outside and lining pieces, and sew them up such that all the raw edges are hidden in-between the layers after you construct it.  The final construction will be a bit mind-bending, especially around the opening.  I imagine you'll end up turning it inside out through one or both of the opening edges, then binding the opening edges last.  I've not quite thought it through, but it's probably possible to accomplish with minimum hand-sewing somehow.

For more details of how I made my version, clicky here.  I provide handy methods of calculating bias binding here.

You might wonder why I'm bothering to provide a pattern with no instructions.  I can only be bothered to provide patterns for things that aren't obviously easy to draw yourself (with likely first time success).  This pattern has darts in the bottom to create fullness for a multitude of pegs, and the first pattern you might draw for a bag like this doesn't work unless you engage brain.

In case you are interested (probably not), I use a mixture of Inkscape and Scribus to digitise my patterns.  It's both free and powerful!

Toddlermatician shirt

When I saw this fabric a year ago on a WI outing to Bee Crafty I had to have it.  Isn't this just the most awesome badass maths fabric you have EVER seen?

I love the combination of chalk-board effect with areas of mad colour.  The most awesome part about it is that the maths is correct.  It even contains reference to Napier's rules, which I even had to look up to see what they were as I've never had occasion to use them.  (Mr Button the person with the real actual Mathematics degree guessed they were to do with logarithms: they're not.)

I've only spotted one error in the maths so far (a missing factor of 2.l.b):

This will annoy me for ever.

I decided that Toddler Button needed a shirt in this epic fabric.  He likes shirts a lot now, because Daddy wears shirts.  Daddy doesn't have a shirt as loud as this one:

With every snip and stitch, this fabric seemed more awesome to me, but also more loud.  This shirt is quite... mad?  Somehow it didn't make my eyes dance when it was on the bolt, but is definitely individual as a shirt.

Can you see the patch pocket in this image?  Me neither.

The pattern is my self-drafted size 2-3 years pattern, see this previous shirt with the skewered soldiers.  Toddler has just started to wear this size in my shirts (they seem a bit bigger than commercial 2-3 stuff), so there is plenty of growing room left.  I didn't have enough patience or fabric to draft a back yoke for this shirt, so we'll have to wait until I have a longer length of fabric and less inclination to just get going fast (as a break from knitting).

Yellow buttons.

Obviously there was only one choice for the buttons.  If I intend this shirt to become a favourite of Toddler Button, it has to be his obsession colour: yellow.  He's not worn the shirt yet, but I'll be sure to let you know if it has the honour of being selected by his Lordship from his drawer in the morning.  He did want to try it on before I'd had chance to slit open the buttonholes, so I have hope.

How could I let this fabric languish in my drawer for a whole year?!  WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Peg Bag II: attack of the pegs

For once I've actually made something I'm pleased with!

I made another peg-bag as a gift for a family member.

This is the second peg-bag I've made, as I fortunately decided to do a trial run by making one for myself first.  It was not a resounding success (see here), partly due to the terrible shape, and partly due to my using bias binding which too narrow and wasn't cut on the bias (so let's just call it "binding").  To top it all, the lack of quilting made the fabric sag, and the oval holes for the hanger and peg entrance were a pain to bind and stretched out of shape in the process.  Further still, in the process of using it, I found the hanger kept dropping into the main bag when my toddler was playing with it.  I also want to fold it up to store it so that the pegs don't fall out.

I fixed my problems (well, only the peg-bag related ones).

To fix the terrible shape, I busted out some maths.  Because I have darts for fullness in the bottom but not in the top, my pattern has to be almost trapezoidal in shape (wider at the bottom) so that when I've sewn it up I end with vertical sides.

Overlapping front pieces.  You even get a close-up of my binding because I'm not so ashamed of it this time around.

To fix the stretched ugly openings, I re-drew the front of the bag in two overlapping pieces.  The main opening is now formed from the curved edges of the two pieces and is lots easier to bind.  I also bound the hanger opening in two halves before constructing the bag.

Bound hanger opening.

To fix the nasty binding, I chose a wider width of 3/4".  I made the binding myself and cut it actually on the bias this time.  I'd been previously put off doing this by thinking that cutting such a narrow strip from the central bias of a huge piece of fabric would give a lot of wastage (two huge triangles), but then I found out about this method of cutting continuous bias tape.  I have given some thought to it and provided formulae to work out the size of square you need to cut in order to make the right amount of bias tape of any width.  I didn't have a 3/4" bias maker, but the Scientific Seamstress provides a cardboard plan for one in 1/2" or 1" sizes.  I measured her cunning design and calculated how to make myself the 3/4" version which works a treat.

Bias binding maker!  Thanks, past Alice, for saving the card from your wedding invitations!

To fix the saggy fabric, I decided to quilt two layers together with a layer of quilt batting between them.  I then cut out my pattern shapes and bound the opening edges.  Next, I stitched the darts and placed the pieces right-sides together and sewed round the edges into a bag.  However, this leaves nasty raw edges on the inside to chafe against pegs.  Not to fear - I used bias binding to enclose the raw edges of the darts and seams: nice bound seams!

Because everything takes 2 seconds in my head, I decided to patchwork 2" half-square triangles on the front and back of the bag.  Obviously this takes considerably longer to execute than I'd imagined (duh), and a lot of fabric.  I used 7 fat quarters in total: 4 patchwork fabrics, 2 inside fabrics and 1 binding fabric.  I don't have an awful lot left over, excepting some scraps and a bit of binding.  Thanks so much to my kind friend who gave my the pack of 6 co-ordinating fat quarters for a birthday present!  I know they're being given away again in a different form, but I've had a lot of fun with them and spent a LOT of time agonizing over their construction, not to mention the time spent chopping them into 2" squares and sewing them back together again.  Put like that, patchwork seems quite pointless doesn't it?!

Elastic loops to hold hanger in.  Also starring bound seam and diagonal quilting.  Cleverly hidden by photography: internal ugly patchwork from blue scraps where I ran out of white fabric.  Ha!

To fix my annoying hanger-drop issue, I attached two elastic loops into the top seam as I was stitching my bag together.  This holds the hanger in place, but it's still removable for laundering the bag.

To fix my storage issues, I added a little loop made from bias binding to the outside bottom of the bag.  This means you can slip it over the hanger wire when you fold the bag in half and everything stays put.  Nice!

Bias loop.  It's the little things that stop you having to play 52-peg-pickup.

So, that's your lot.  I can't believe how much thought I put into making a peg bag that looks totally ordinary and is functional.  It turns out it's easier to make something ugly and rubbish.  I'll now go back to cursing the prototype peg bag that I have to live with.

Continuous bias tape: a magic formula

I'm not going to start this post with an apology for not posting, because I don't have to!  Mwa ha ha!  I've been too busy with paid work and chasing a toddler around.

I have been knitting (as always) and I'm still sewing, but I can't post anything yet.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd spend a few moments in thought about continuous bias tape.  The Coletterie has a lovely tutorial on how to make continuous bias tape, which I highly recommend.  I'm not going to try and give you such a tutorial here when a good one already exists.  However, having followed their tutorial measurements to the letter a few times, I note that I do not get the whole number of 1" strips marked across the fabric as they show for their step 4.  The result is that I get less than the 100" of bias tape they propose.  This is probably because I do not edge-stitch as they suggest in step 2: instead, I use a 1/4" seam to match the one they suggest in step 6. 

I like the 1/4" seam and I do not want to do their flimsy edge-stitch.  Fortunately maths comes to the rescue and I bring you the magic formulas for cutting continuous bias tape.

For this method, follow the Colette tutorial, but substitute my measurements.  Also, use a 1/4" seam in steps 2 and 6.

I want to make a total length (T) of bias strip of width (w).

When I come to draw my lines on the fabric (see tutorial step 4), I'll need to draw enough to separate my fabric into n strips, where n = sqrt(T/(2w).  I'll have to round up to the nearest integer to make sure I get at least length T and I don't end up with half a strip.

I therefore need to start in step 1 with a fabric square of side D = n*w*sqrt(2) + 1/2".

So, to put numbers in my example, say I'd like to make 98" of bias tape of width 1".
w = 1"
T = 98"
So I need to draw lines in step 4 to separate my fabric into n = sqrt(98"/2") = sqrt(49) = 7.  I need to draw 7 strips.
n = 7
Now I need to start in step 1 with a square of D by D, where D = 7*1"*sqrt(2) + 1/2" = 10.4"
D = 10.4".

Therefore, I ought to have started the Colette tutorial with approximately a 10 3/8" square, not a 10" square.  No wonder it went wrong!

Don't stop there: use the magic to find the square size D for however much tape of whatever width you want!  THE POWER IS IN YOUR HANDS!

What happened to July?

The summer seems to be racing by and with hardly a blog post in sight!  I'm a little shocked that I didn't post for a whole month, but I'm still going to tell you what I did.

Mostly, I looked after toddler Button who is reaching new levels of excitement and energy.  I also did some paid work.

After making my ruffle dress, I decided I wanted a matching yellow cardigan, and said as much on the knitting network Ravelry.  Some kind soul (who I don't even know in real life) saw my comment and had the kindness to message me with a link to the perfect yarn she had searched out!  People's generosity on this site amazes me.  I bought the yarn she suggested (Sirdar Simply Recycled) in yellow for 59p/50g ball, which is an incredible price and cast on for Miette by Andi Satterlund.  Fortunately her group "Untangling Knots" was running an outfit-along at the the same time, where you sew and knit a co-ordinating dress and cardigan, so I thought I'd enter.  Sadly I missed the deadline by a matter of hours, but nevertheless I still have a matching dress and cardigan which I love.  Behold:

If I look manic in this photo it's because I was trying to make the toddler standing in the doorway laugh and therefore not toddle out of the house in his slippers.

This manic knitting exercise took pretty much the entire last two weeks of July.  Before that, I was drafting this dress which I have yet to test.

Since the cardigan, I had to crochet some DNA.  This is for a WI competition (don't ask) and I'm afraid I've had a bad attitude about making it.  At least it contains glittery yarn, even if the nucleotides look a bit like suppositories.  The pattern is my own, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to publish it; I'm not feeling the love for this project.

Now I'm back to my sewing machine again, this time to make a gift for someone in the month of September.  I can't say more than that until the gift is given, so you'll have to wait.