Tutorial: how to make a shower curtain

Making a shower curtain from your own fabric is a really simple project.  This tutorial is in two parts.  Part one will deal with creating the fabric curtain.

First, measure your space. You need to know how wide the tub is (usually 72-74″) and how long you want your curtain.

To get your width, measure your tub space. You have several design choices to make at this point. You can simply measure your shower curtain liner and make your curtain the same width. This will result in a more tailored looking curtain.  You can use your curtain liner as a template to mark off the holes for the curtain rings onto your fabric curtain.

If you want more fullness in your fabric shower curtain, you have several options. You can multiply the tub width by 1 1/2 or even 2x the width to get a more gathered looking curtain.

Generally speaking, your shower curtain liner will have holes for 12 curtain rings.  To create the hole spaces for your fuller fabric shower curtain, you can take your full curtain width and divide that measurement evenly to accommodate the 12 holes. This plan keeps the full width of the curtain protected by the liner, but you might find some of the fabric curtain drooping in between the rings when the curtain is closed.

Another option for the fuller fabric shower curtain is to space 12 holes to line up with the shower curtain liner, then add extra holes for additional curtain rings to account for the extra width of the fabric curtain. The curtain will then extend beyond the curtain liner at either or both ends.

To get the length, I hung one of my shower curtain rings, then measured from the bottom of that down to the floor. Take that number (X”) and add 1/2″ to that measurement to account for the part of the curtain that extends beyond the top of the grommet and into the curtain ring itself (X” plus 1/2″). Now, subtract 1″ from the bottom edge of the curtain hem, to keep the curtain up off of the potentially wet floor (X” plus 1/2″ minus 1″). Finally, add 3″ for the top edge (2 x 1 1/2″– you will end up with 3 thicknesses of fabric at the top edge of your curtain), and 3″ for the bottom hem.

To recap the length: measure from curtain ring to floor, add 5 1/2″ to get your total length, including the top and bottom hems.

Once you have the proper width (sewing lengths together as needed) and length, you will sew the outer edge hems (or leave them as selvedges, if that aesthetic is okay).  I press about 1/2″, then fold that over and press again, then top-stitch.  Repeat for the other edge.

For the top edge, press 1 1/2″ all along the width of the curtain.  Fold over, and press again, then top- stitch.  You should now have 3 thicknesses of fabric, with a 1 1/2″ hem at the top edge.

For the bottom edge, press 1/2″ all along the width of the curtain.  Fold over 2 1/2″, press, then top stitch.   Note:  I usually wait to hem the bottom after the curtain has been hanging in place for a week, to let the fabric relax and stretch if it’s going to.

Up next:  grommets!  With photos!!

shower curtain

It seems like the cousin of Murphy’s Law goes into effect when you remodel a home: no matter where you start the remodel, you end up remodeling every corner of the house. My house has proved no exception to the rule; we now find ourselves working our way through the house from one end to the other.

One desperately needed upgrade has been the bathrooms. The cabinets and fixtures are the originals from 1976… old, dated, falling apart. The boy’s bathroom got the first re-do:

The cabinet was a dining room buffet piece that Mr. Wild Onion re-finished. The granite is a beautiful rusty gold, with slate tiles as the surrounding backspash. The mirror was a Costco find.

The shower curtain is the point of this post, however.  I couldn’t find a store-bought curtain that looked nice in this elegant bathroom.  One day, I noticed that Mr. Wild Onion had pulled out a piece of my rusted, overdyed fabrics and draped it over the shower curtain rod.  What’s this??  Mr. W.O. is playing in my stash??  Get out!!

Turns out he hasn’t decided to learn how to quilt (phew– my stash is safely MINE!!) He just thought that the fabric looked good in the bathroom.  OH!!  Cool!! He has a very good eye for color and texture, and I agreed that the fabric really added some great texture in the room.

A shower curtain has a lot of fabric, so I had to create some rusty art cloth specifically for the project.  I got out some white cotton, dampened it in a water/vinegar mixture, and tossed it (artfully, of course) into my trusty rusty wheelbarrow.

A week later, after turning and misting the fabric daily, I had enough lovely rusty fabric for the curtain.  I added some whimsically cut chocolate brown squares to mimic the slate tile squares in the backsplash/bathtub area.  I love how it turned out, and thought you might like to see an example of how to use your own art cloth:

Here’s another fairly gratuitous photo, just because I do so love the rusty texture!

Next up:  a tutorial on adding grommets

Foreign intrigue and the front page

What an unusual day, yesterday!

It began with the carpet guy, installing new carpet in the hall and boys’ rooms. Last night was the first time the boys slept in their own separate rooms since the youngest got out of his crib. Around here, that fact is only awe-inspiring to me, so of course, I needed to share it with you all. Moms everywhere get those kind of significant milestones.

Anyway, the boys are happy as clams to have their own private rooms, and No, for the ninetieth time, boys,  NO LOCKS on the DOORS!! (Why do they think that they need locks? They’re in grade school, for goodness sake! It must be a boy thing).

While I was trying to look busy, yet available for question answering for the carpet guy, I thought I’d check on my email. Lo and behold, there’s an emailed comment from my blog that’s completely unintelligible to me. It doesn’t look like any language I recognize.  Lately I’ve been troubled by a lot of splogging (splogging:  when someone steals your blog content) I was kind of stern and actually, let’s be honest, really harsh in my demand request that my content be removed from her blog. And then….

I noodled around my blog stats. And there’s yet another blog or website, linking to mine, and now I’ve got like, quadrupled the amount of normal everyday traffic! Hunh! And this blog linking mine is in the same, unintelligible language. And that’s not all. There are 2 other blogs linking to me, boosting my viewer visits. It’s really nifty– and it’s all about the tee-bags that my oldest DS is selling at the Farmer’s Market!

After 2 hours of blog detecting, I figured out that:

1. The foreign blogs are from Estonia.
2. There are no Estonia-English online translators. At least, there were none that were working yesterday morning.
3. DS1 now thinks he’s famous.

And is that all to this unusual day? Oh no! I find out that I am a day late and a dollar short two times over.  Not only have I missed witnessing the Perseid meteor shower by one day, but I didn’t see my own personal shot at the sun:  my hand dyed fabric was featured on the FRONT PAGE of Etsy! I missed it!  By one day!

I admit that I am not very conversant in the byways and highways of Etsy, so I didn’t know to check this kind of happening. I got a nice note from Monica, congratulating me on making the front page with one of my hand-dyed fabrics!

It was a gorgeous page (which expired this morning, so unfortunately I can’t show you), and I thank you again for putting me in such beauteous company! I’ve uploaded quite a bit more fabric:

including several 4 yard lengths that will make gorgeous, traffic-stopping wholecloth Wild Onion Jackets.

I’m just saying. In case someone in Estonia wants to blog about jackets.

Hand dyed fabric

Posting my to-do list for you all to see (and hold me to) is still daunting to me, however one positive side effect is that I am more conscious of posting work I am committed to finishing, instead of work I hope to finish. I am trying to be more thoughtful about my lists that way. Putting down a zillion chores that I probably won’t get to just stresses me out! I run from the moment my feet hit the floor, so I know I’m productive… just not always as productive in the way I’d wished for at 6:30 am!

So, with that, here’s what I did accomplish last week:

To Do (next week):

• quilt 2 quilts for Carol Done, picked up by the customer yesterday!
• load etsy photos Done! I love loading etsy– it’s such a user friendly site, and I enjoy writing the copy for my work… especially when I get to be smart-aleck-y instead of artist-y!
• contact my ISP and get my email back up and running Hahahahahaha
• re-organize my website to reflect the etsy shop see above comment

You can see that the serious computer stuff didn’t get touched. Sigh. I just didn’t have a day where the computer was the first thing on my list. I had to finish the quilts for my client as she will be hanging them in a quilt show this weekend. Excuses, excuses. I love the easy part of the computer, but I hate the hard part. One of these days, I’ll gather up some money, and pay a website designer. (note in my defense: I did learn how to edit the color/temperature/saturation, etc on my photos so that when I uploaded them, the colors on the monitor matched the actual fabric colors. So, that’s something!)

Yesterday was productive though! I loaded 12 pieces of my hand dyed fabric in my etsy shop (shameless plug) and that was really fun! I was on quite a roll, until the internet suddenly cut off, and I was forced to quit. I’ll post a few photos here, but if you want to see all of the dyeing work I did last week, check out the shop.

I was inspired to try some new dyeing techniques after reading and re-reading the wonderful books by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan of Committed to Cloth. Because the books are unavailable here in the States, I had to buy Tray Dyeing and Breakdown Printing from England and have them shipped over. I found Fibrecrafts in the UK to be very friendly, and it was fairly inexpensive to ship the books over here. Well worth the effort!

Anyway, I did promise some new (to me) tricks with dyeing, so here goes. See the blue/green fabric up at the top left? I soaked it in its soda ash bath, then twisted it into a spiral, stuck it in a plastic tub, and drizzled the dye liquid over top. This is what it looked like while it batched:

If you drizzle the colors around in different configurations, you (obviously!) wind up with different looks to the finished product. Also, instead of spiralling, like I did with the above fabric, you can “skinny” the fabric like you are pleating it (loosely) and then stuff it into a tub (a box shape this time), accordian style. That’s how I ended up with the dye patterns on this fabric:

I also experimented quite a bit with just smooshing the fabric into a box and dripping/drizzling the dye over. I got amazing cloudy patterns, and some beautiful crystal-looking patterns that way. This is my new favorite playtime! Previously, my dye days were so physically labor intensive that I worried about the health of my back. This way gives such interesting results that I may be experimenting with dye for a long long time to come. I think I feel a hand-dyed wholecloth Wild Onion Jacket coming on…..

I’ll leave you with a few more photos. On the top is a complex cloth that I think has great application for an applique’r. On the bottom, well, don’t look for it in my etsy shop– I tucked it away in my own studio while I had my back turned!

How I rust fabric. A tutorial!

I have been so intrigued by creating rusty fabric! All summer long, a part of my backyard has been taken over by various rusty implements:

Here is a tutorial of how I use these rusty implements to create my rusted fabric. Today, we will work with an old oil drum, now being used to create a shibori-type pattern on some white cotton fabric.

Here are some finished fabrics– I like to overdye and stamp and stencil on the rusted fabric, to create unusual and unique art cloth!

I tend to figure techniques out without the aid of books or videos, because I find that the mistakes I make along the way lead me to create unique-to-me versions of whatever endeavor I’m attempting to produce. To rust fabric, Susan-style:

1. beg the neighbors for rusty items
2. stack said items in a heap in the backyard
3. cook lovely dinner for DH who complains that the neighbors will think we live in a trashy dump
4. explain over lovely dinner that neighbors are too busy laughing at wife and celebrating the removal of trash from their own yards to think badly of us
5. dampen fabric (silk, cotton, rayon, poly– everything I’ve tried rusts) with a 50/50 mix of white vinegar/water
6. arrange, tie, and/or smoosh fabric artistically around, over, on top of rusty object
7. sprinkle fabric with salt
8. cover fabric/rusty object with plastic tarp to keep fabric damp
9. check every so often for appropriate level of rust transfer** note that this transfer seems to happen faster with silk than with cotton, and faster in warm weather than cool

I over dye with Procion dyes, then stamp or stencil with Lumiere paints. Voila!

If you want more detailed directions, videos, or tools, please visit Rust-Tex, a wonderful new online site for all things rusty!

Happy rusting!