DIY Idea-How to Make and Sew kitchen curtains from Square Dance Skirts Or Old Clothing...Re-Cycling fabric the fun way!

I love to re-use old clothes—there are so many things you can do with the fabric. One of the projects I’ve done many times was making Halloween costumes out of old clothing, but there are so many other things you can do, also! De-constructing, or just re-constructing, old fabric is something I love to do.

This time around I realized that I desperately needed new curtains on my kitchen window and the French doors that lead outside from that room. So I started digging around in my "stash" of old clothing and fabric. I came up with two vintage square dancing skirts that I had planned to sell on Ebay, but never got around to. I think that I did sub-consciously not want to list them because I loved the fabric! I have a weakness for anything red in my kitchen, so I thought that these two fabrics would be perfect—IF I could figure out how to co-ordinate the two for curtains.

First, I had to take the skirts apart, which meant taking apart each seam as carefully as possible, so I wouldn’t snag the fabric. This took a long time, but, by the time I got done, I was rewarded with yards and yards of beautiful fabric. I had never realized until then just how much fabric it took to make those very full skirts for square dancing!

Next came the hard part—figuring out a pattern for the curtains, making sure that there was enough fabric to cover my 4 x 6 ft. window, and two narrow French doors. I had already made some door panels out of unbleached muslin, so I decided to just use those, and add trim using the fabric of the skirts.

After many ideas and measurements, I finally came up with some ideas, and set to work. I managed to combine the two skirt fabrics into a decent design that I liked. After that came many many hours of sewing…did I tell you that I made most of these by hand? I love to sew by hand, and avoid the sewing machine as often as I can. It takes so much longer, but since I wasn’t in any hurry, I didn’t worry about the time involved. I would sit and sew while watching TV in the evenings—usually 2 or 3 hours at a time.

Each curtain was three separate pieces sewn together, as you may be able to see in the pic. I realize that I didn’t provide measurements, , but since windows come in so many different shapes and sizes, it really wouldn’t have been that much of a help. I am more of a measure and cut kind of person, and don’t keep track of all of the measurements anyway. And I don’t use patterns because I just prefer to come up with my own ideas…because it’s fun!

As I worked on the window curtains, I had reached a point, though, where I was anxious to see the final result, so I brought out my sewing machine, and finished the last couple of seams on them. I loved how they turned out—they made my kitchen so much more colorful with the red, yellow, and black pattern.

After finishing the window curtains, I started on the door panels—I ended up deciding to do just a piece along the bottom from one skirt, and a tube-shaped section along the top for the rod from the other skirt fabric.  Then I cut out two of the flowers from the floral fabric and sewed them onto each panel, using embroidery floss to completely outline each flower.

I’m thinking of possibly embroidering more design on the door panels in the future, but I haven’t decided what I would do yet, so I’ll hold off on that for awhile, I think!

The difference these curtains have made in my kitchen is amazing—I love walking in there now to all that bright color! I realize that these fabric designs are not to everyone’s taste, and that’s fine. My main reason for writing this was to encourage others to give re-purposing fabric a try—if you love to sew, like I do, then there are MANY projects that you can come up with, if you just use your imagination!

Why throw out those old clothes, when you can recycle them, and save money(always important!)—and not to mention, you can come up with some pretty unique results? And you prevent them from being added to the landfills, where they don’t do anyone any good anymore.