In the bathroom downstairs at ‘Our House’, we have a large shower. The bathroom has shades of blues, greens and browns with white accents. I wanted a new shower curtain for it, but I really didn’t want to spend any money on it. So… what else? Go to the craft closet and pull out fabric possibilities. There is a large stack of leftovers from old projects. (If you really want to see a picture of that closet, click here. It kinda looks like a mess, but I do know where everything is… well mostly)

Now back to the lower level bathroom, here’s a quick peek at the before and after.

Before: (boring. Although I will re-use this vinyl curtain liner to line the new fabric one.)

And here’s the after: (fun!! Colorful, ties the room together, and totally free!)

(for some reason in the picture the shower looks like it has a brownish mottled finish on it, but it is actually just plain white, you can see how it really looks on the right side of the curtain, see? Just white)

Here are the simple DIY steps I did to make this curtain.

Of all the fabric choices in my closet, the one I liked the best for this room was the leftovers from the Living Room window treatments… but it just wasn’t quite long enough for a shower curtain, so I kept pulling… then I stumbled upon a small piece that was left over from recovering the Pottery Barn bench. Obviously, I knew the two fabrics complimented each other, as they’re in the same room together upstairs, so after seeing that they went wonderfully with the colors in the bathroom as well, here’s what I did.

Cut a large rectangle, basically the whole piece I had left of the paisley, just trimming it even.

Then cut a long rectangle of the stripe to be the same width of the paisley fabric, but adding the extra 9” I needed at the top so the curtain would be long enough when hung up. (if you’re doing this at home, be sure to add enough extra for the seams, and to fold in and finish the edges)

So with right sides together, I pinned the striped strip of fabric onto the top of the paisley fabric and stitched the two together.

Then I went around all 4 edges of the shower curtain and folded and pressed ½” and folded and pressed that another ½” to hide all the raw edges.  Then I stitched that double fold all the way around the curtain. (don’t be confused, I didn’t add another fabric, the red and blue print fabric you see in this picture is my ironing board cover)

Ok, there it is with the top striped strip sewn on, and the sides all pressed and stitched.

Now to figure out how to hang the curtain onto the rod…

I really wanted to add a little more pizzazz and color so I dug through my bin of ribbons. I have several vintage ribbons that I purchased from Ebay a few years ago for a Christmas craft.

After I decided on the right selection of ribbon, I cut, folded in ½ and stitched the ribbon ties to the top inside edge of the shower curtain, spacing the 12 ribbon ties evenly across the top. (to get the right length of ribbon, I practice tied it. The knot uses a lot of extra ribbon, especially on these wide stiff ribbons, so don’t cut them too short!)

That’s it! All done! All free! This project was so simple, it took me about an hour to do it… the most important step is to have the fabric pieces cut straight and to be sure to square up the corners. I always use a carpenters square and a 58” long metal measuring stick for when I mark the fabric.

Here’s one more quick look at the finished project:

On the right of this picture you can see just a small corner of the vanity. I’ll tell you all about that in another post, and show you how my son and I took it from u.g.l.y to absolutely charming, and for hardly any money, just a lot of creativity and a little elbow grease.

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