From Curtains to Cowl

While perusing my favorite blogs the other day, I ran across something pretty exciting!

Young House Love?  A link up challenge?  PINTEREST?  Count me in.

I immediately hopped on over to Pinterest to see what project I could come up with. Just one quick glance at my sewing or diy boards made me giddy with ideas.  I had so many projects I wanted to start on! Including this heart stopping one.  But my budget of $0 was pulling the reins in kind of tightly.  Finally, I spied something that gave me an idea.

I pinned this amazing lace scarf from A Beautiful Mess!  Original tutorial here.

Pretty adorable, right?  And I already had some lace in the form of an old set of curtains left over from the previous owner of our house.

They were in our scary “junk” room, but Timothy took them down in a fury one day when he decided to make it his office.

I loved the idea of a lace scarf, but I loved the idea of a lace cowl even more.  I don’t know what it is about cowls, but they are rocking my world lately!  So this is how I kind of made one up as I went along:

I took one curtain panel and folded it in half longways so the hem and ruffly top were together.

Sew the ends together like shown.  Make sure the hem and all of the ruffly portion of the curtain is to one side of your stitch line while the rest of the curtain is to the other side.

Then cut between the stitch line (shown by the black arrow) and the hem.  Voila!

Treat that edge like a skirt hem and roll it over itself twice.  The lace I was using frayed really easily, so the easiest way for me to do this was to fold it once, pin it, then fold it again and repin.  Sew the hem and you won’t have to worry about it fraying or ripping open.

This is what the curtain should look like.  And this is also where I made a mistake that I didn’t realize until the end.  See how the hem is visible?  At this stage, you should flip the cowl inside out so the hem is hidden inside.

Then fold the lace tube in half, matching the edges.  This part is really easy because these edges won’t fray.  Simply pin the layers and then sew them together.  And crazy enough, you’re done! Put it around your neck and feel fabulous. (Standing in front of corn: optional but awesome.)

I really like how it turned out!  Best project ever – it was free and took 15 minutes.

I have three more panels of the curtains left.  I’m thinking Christmas presents? Ha!

So did any of you bloggers participate in the Pinterest challenge?  Or have any of you made something inspired by Pinterest lately?  I’d love to see!  And by the way, check out the sponsers of the Pinterest Challenge today (Young House Love, Bower Power, Ana White, and House of Earnest).  Everyone is linking up their projects!  I can’t wait to scroll through and get some sweet ideas.

~Whitney