Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this class where you will learn how to make these beautiful linen tab top curtains completely by hand. No sewing machine needed. You'll learn how to take your measurements, cut your fabric, and all the hand
sewing techniques you need to complete these
curtains for your home. If you're new to hand sewing, this is a nice and simple
beginners project, or you might have a
bit more experience and just want to try
out a new design. My name is Laura Lamb and I am a folk singer and seamstress. I love sewing by hand. It's my favorite cozy
evening activity. I find it a fantastic creative therapy to bring peace
and calm into my life. To complete this
class, you'll need some very basic and
affordable sewing equipment. You'll need a journal
to make notes. You'll need a woven fabric,
preferably a linen. And you'll need patience. If you really love working
with a sewing machine, you could also
adjust this design to make these curtains
on your sewing machine. Let's get sewing.
See you in class.
2. What You Will Need: Welcome. Welcome, and thank
you for joining this class. First of all, we'll go
through what we need. But before we get into
the actual bits and bobs, let's talk about one
important quality we'll need, and
that is patience. Hand sewing takes a long time. It's a slow process, and it can also be fiddly
when we first start. So be very patient
with yourself. In the resources section, you'll find a Linen Curtain
workbook which you can download and follow through as we work through this class. Also, I'm here to help you. So if you ever get
stuck, please go to the Discussions tab and you
can ask me any questions. Now let's run through all
the bits and bobs we need. You'll also find this list
in the class description. Here's my trusty mini sewing
bag. I've got needles. This is the main needle I use. You can buy needles in
all different sizes. It's worth buying a selection and finding out
what's best for you. I've got my thread. I love this Gutterman thread. You might like pins too, if you're a pin person. I've got my thimble, which protects my
finger when I'm sewing. Oh, here's my little
book of pins and needles for when I need a different pin
or a different needle. Then I've got my very
nice fabric scissors, which must only be
used to cut fabric, never used to cut anything else. Tape measure for measuring
my trusty journal, for drawing out designs and writing out measurements
and doing calculations. And a woven fabric, if you need a bit more
help choosing your fabric, I recommend heading to less than five of my
gathered skirt class, where I go into the five
things that you need to consider when choosing a woven
fabric for your project. Now we know what we need.
Let's head to the next lesson, where we will measure
and cut our fabric. See you in the next lesson.
3. Measure and Cut: Welcome back. In this lesson, we will measure and
cut our fabric. Please make sure, if
you haven't already, to download the Linen
Curtain workbook. Which will help you
as you work through, depending on whether
you've chosen a light cotton fabric or
a heavy linen fabric, this will affect how
you cut your fabric. I've got a special lesson in lesson six of my
gathered skirt class, where I run through
my top tips and techniques on how to
cut woven fabric. Also reminding you, if you need a bit more help when
choosing your fabric, please head to lesson five
of my gathered skirt class, where I run through
the five things you need to consider
when choosing fabric. If you're interested to
know these linen curtains, I've made 100% linen. And they are 190 GSM, that's grams per square meter. And the fabric that
I bought on the bolt was 137 centimeters wide. It's worth checking the width of the fabric before you buy it. I've done it before
where I've worked at all my calculations assuming
that the fabric would be, say, 150 centimeters,
which it often is. And then sometimes
it's more narrow, like 137 centimeters. So just check that when
you buy your fabric, before you start working
with your fabric, I highly recommend
washing your fabric because it can shrink on
the first wash. Also, it's nice to iron it so
it's easy to work with. Let's get stuck in to measuring and calculating
the pieces that we need. Let's just get a picture
of what we need to measure and where we're going
to end up the measurements. We're going to need to
take the measurement, the width of the pole, which we are going to call a. We need to measure the desired
length of the curtains, and we're going to
call that, we need to measure the desired
width of the tabs. My tabs are 5
centimeters in width. If you like the look of mine, you might like to copy that. Or if you want yours a
little wider or narrower, you could adjust that five
centimeter measurement. Then finally, we want the
desired length of the tabs. And then by the
end of this class, we will have worked this out. So we'll be able to see that we need two
pieces of fabric. One left curtain,
one right curtain. And then we will know what
size those pieces will be. And then we will also work out what size our tabs will
be and how many we need. In the case of my living room, there are ten tabs for
each pair of curtains. Five tabs on each curtain. In my kitchen, there's just
three tabs on each curtain. First of all, let's work out the width of our curtain pieces. Here I am measuring
the width of the pole. So I'm going right from the end of the pole to the other end. That figure we are
going to call a. Then this is the
calculation we need to do. First of all, we need to
divide that number by two because we're going
to have two curtains. Then we're going to
multiply that number by 1.5 to give a bit of
gather to our curtains. If you want your
curtains very flat, like the ones in my kitchen, don't multiply by 1.5
If you would like them, like the ones in
my sitting room, then do multiply by
1.5 Then finally, we add 2 centimeters
seam allowance. In the case of these
measurements we've just done, we do 142/2 which
equals 71 centimeters. Then we multiply 71 by 1.5
which gives us 106.5 Finally, 106.5 plus two, which
gives us 108.5 You can, if you want, work with
0.5 measurements. Personally, I think
it's a bit silly. So I've just rounded
it up to one oh nine. That is our curtain
width measurements. Now let's work out the length
of our curtain pieces. Here I am now measuring
the length of my curtain. I want to measure from the
top and then all the way down to the bottom
of the curtain. Then we're going
to add the hem on which is 6 centimeters. Then what you'll want to
do for the calculation, the desired length
of the curtain, plus 1 centimeter at the
top for the top seam. And then for my heavy hem, I added 12 centimeters, which folds in half to
make a six centimeter hem. That means I will be adding 13 centimeters to
the curtain length, 125 plus 13 equals
138 centimeters. Finally, let's work
out our curtain tabs. And how many will need? My tabs are 5
centimeters in width. You might like to recreate that or make your slightly
bigger or smaller. Then how I measured the length of my tabs is
I hung a tape measure like this around
the pole and worked out how long I would
like them to hang down. When you've got those
two measurements, what you need to do is take the desired width of the tab
and multiply that by two, and then add a two
centimeter seam allowance. I want my tab to
be 5 centimeters. I multiply that by two
equals to 10 centimeters. Then I add two centimeter
seam allowance, so it will equal 12 centimeters. Then for the length, we would like our tabs to
be 27 centimeters long. All we do is add 1 centimeter
for seam allowance. Then in the end, each
of our tabs will be 12 by 28 centimeters. And we will need ten tabs. Here's now a little summary
of all the pieces we need. This is our final image
of what we will have. We will have our
left curtain and our right curtain. We'll
have our measurements. In my case, it's 109
centimeters by 138 centimeters. Then we will have worked out the size
of each of our tabs, which in this case is
12 by 28 centimeters. I recommend taking
some time to visualize your curtains hanging and to visualize the
pieces of fabric. Because when I first started making clothes and making
things for my home, sometimes I would get
mixed up with how long it needed to be because I wasn't thinking
about the seams, I wasn't thinking
about the hems. Now you've got those numbers, you might just want to sleep on them and just double
check it again. Because it can be very
easy to make mistakes. And then it's very frustrating if you've made any mistakes. And it can be very
hard to correct. Now you've got those figures, just take a moment, work
through it all again. Look at it all again.
Please head to the curtains workbook where
you'll find step by step of how I did these
measurements and calculations. And also you'll find the exact measurements
and calculations for the curtains in my living room and the curtains in my kitchen. Okay, now we've got our fabric
cut all our pieces ready. Let's head to the next lesson
where we'll start sewing. See you in the next lesson.
4. Flat Fell Edges: Welcome back. In this lesson, we will be flat felling the edges of our curtains.
Let's get sewing. First of all, we're just folding over the edge like
this to flat fell it. You can choose how
much you fold it over. Mine is about four to 5
millimeters each fold. We start as we mean to go on and just making sure that we're sitting in a
comfortable position, that our shoulders are relaxed, that our jaw is relaxed. Starting with two
fastening knots, then this is the fell stitch. We just scoop under
one and then pull up a millimeter or two away. I'm going to demonstrate
this stitch a few times, scooping under a thread or two, and then coming up at an angle. I've been doing this stitch
for over two years now. Mine is now very neat. And even take a bit of practice
to get your stitch neat. And even now we're going to change threads because
I've run out of thread. I tuck this one out of the way and then
start a new one, leaving a gap between
the stitches. Then scooping under and doing a fastening knot for
this new thread. That's how we change
threads midway. If you run out of thread while you're doing
your fell stitch, carrying on, scooping under one or two threads
coming up at an angle. We just need to trim off this excess thread from
our new attached thread. Eventually, we'll get
all the way to the end. Now we need to do the corner doing another fastening knot. Remembering to check our
posture, shoulders, neck, jaw. We just simply turn and carry
on the same round here. We just make sure that
we tuck all of this in. I normally at the corners, do a few knots just to make
sure that the corners are secure as well as
the body relax. We keep the breath relaxed. Breathing slow and easy. When we're concentrating, sometimes we can
hold our breath. We don't need to do that. If you are a more precise
person who likes to measure, you might actually
like to measure and do some marks for how big you would like your
filled edges to be. I personally just
do it all by eye. See, there's another
knot to secure that. Then we just carry on. This is now the top
edge of your curtain. Now carrying along the top, we've done one side, now
we're doing the top. Now we've come around
to the next corner so we can travel back
down the other side. What we're going to
do is we're going to tuck that side in first and then the top over so that we recreate how
it looks on the other side. That the top edge is folded
over just like this. Now we just need to
fasten that in place. There's no specific
way that I do this, but I normally just
use a few knots. Checking in again,
jaw, shoulders, breathing, so there's 1 knot and then I need to get all these little
fiddly bits around. So I normally just find a
way of working my way round so that everything is
knotted and fastened. There we go, that's the second corner done. The other top edge
of our curtain. And now we're going to
come down the other side, taking a moment to fiddle
and get everything straight, And then continuing with our lovely flat fell
stitch all the way down. Now we've completed three
sides of our curtain. We can now do a
nice fastening knot and this part is complete. So this is what your curtain
will be looking like now. I love that scrunchy linen. Now three of our edges of our
curtains are flat felled. I'll see you in the next
lesson for the next step.
5. Sew and Press Tabs: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to sew
and press the tabs. This is what our finished tab will look like from the inside. So we need to cut a thread
to the length of the tab. And a little bit
extra for knots. Thread it, trust Thimble. Then we're going to do
a nice fastening knot. To begin, I've been leaving about 1 centimeter seam.
There's no rule on this. It's just whatever works
with your measurements. I've been recently learning about teddy bear
making, and with that, they only use a three
millimeter seam allowance, which seems so tight. It's up to you what's a good seam allowance
for you to work with? In this case, it's
about five millimeter. It's all about the tension here. If you pull it too tight,
it'll get all scrunched up. Want to smooth out
as you go along? Also remembering as we work
through this project to focus on relaxation of the neck, the shoulders, and the jaw,
Now we're at the other end. We can do another knot
that was very simple. I'm going to do 2
knots, Looking lovely. Then all we simply do is
we flip it the other way. And now we need
to press it flat. So taking a moment to using your eye to get it
as straight as possible, then I normally press it with
a little blast of steam. There we go. That's
your tab, all ready. Now that step is complete. I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Attach Tabs: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to attach
our tabs to our curtains. Let's get sewing now. We've got our tabs
ready to attach them. We just need to fold
over the raw edges, like I'm folding over by
about four or 5 millimeters. Again, this is up
to you. I'll take a moment just fiddling
around with this till I get a really nice
straight line. This is while I'm working with
a coarser linen like this, because you can really see
the grain of the fabric, which makes it easier to
make really straight edges. I start on the corner
with a nice knot, forming a loop as we have, and then going in the loop. Here's where we are. Then all we need to
do is attach that to our nice felled
edge that we've done. We just line it up
very neatly, like so. And start on this corner. As with the rest
of this project, just taking a moment
to remember to relax, relax shoulders, relax neck. To keep your breathing
slow and easy. We're doing basically
the same stitch, the fell stitch
that we did before, where you just scoop
under and then pull up a bit further along. Now the choice is to go through all three layers or
just to slightly flip that top layer
of the tab under. I'm just going through all three like this so it's secure. Let me just work our
way round like so. Then once we get to
the end we need to do, please turn around and
do the other side. So now we need to
prepare the other edge. As we did with the first edge, we just need to flip
a little bit over. Take a moment to really get
that nice straight edge. I want to put on
your glasses or use a magnifying glass if your fabric isn't
as coarse a grain, so that you can use the weave of the fabric
to find a straight line. That's mine. Looking
pretty straight. Now we fold it over. Do the other side, you can
see the tiny little stitches, our fell stitches from
where we did the edge and our mark for the line of where
we want this tab to sit, just looking at
those stitches and that's how far you
want to fold over, coming through to
the other side. I might like to do a little knot here just to secure that. Now on the other side, and just carrying on
exactly the same way with this fell stitch. So a little scoop and then
coming in at an angle, just working our way along. The great thing about
working by hand is it's so slow that if anything gets
a little bit out of place, you're not just going to
whizz over it and do it. One key, you can
just take your time. Remember, this is a practice of being still and being
in the moment again, relaxing the jaw, the
solder, the neck. Connecting with this
beautiful item you're making. So now we're at the end. We just want to sandwich this end in and just do a few more knots to
really secure that. Then we just make that thread disappear by pulling it through. And then we can, I'm doing another up here because I think I missed a bit
at the beginning. You can just have a
little of any bits you missed, pull that through, and snow, we just need to repeat the same with the rest of the tabs
that we're going to do. My curtain is a
very small curtain. So it's just going
to have three tabs. First of all, I'm going to
attach this other side. Here it is, close
up so you can see the fine stitching I've done
to attach the other side. Then there's ways, I'm sure you could work
this out with a ruler because I just like working by eye and using the
fabric to measure. So it's very simple, you
just fold it in half. This is why it's good
to do an odd number of tabs because you can just do
it very easily like this, it fold it in half, that's
the exact halfway point. Then we just need
to fold on our tab, we know the exact halfway
point of our tab. Then those two points can meet. Then we know it's
exactly in the middle. But as before, we need
to make sure that we fold that raw edge away. Focusing, neck, shoulders, jaw. So we're going to use
that center point. We're going to start on this tab in the center
marking point so that we can, that's the first thing
we're going to do. We're going to just line
up the two halfway marks. It doesn't get thrown off, there's the halfway point, then we just match that to the halfway point that we
measured on our curtain. And repeating exactly
the same steps, always joining on with
a fastening knot, and then just carrying on
round with the fell stitch, remembering to breathe
as you concentrate. There we go. That is all finished now, looking
absolutely beautiful. Now that step is complete, I will see you in the next on.
7. Hem Curtains: Now we're at the final step, we're going to hem our
curtains. Let's get sewing. Now, using the marks
we've made to fold our hem to the desired length, my curtains aren't very wide. I've just marked
this measurement out at either end of the curtain. If your curtains
are a lot wider, you might like to
make another marking at the midway point, or a few spread out over the width of the
curtain just to make sure that your lines
stay straight. The fabric wants to
fold at the grain. With such a short
width of curtain, it's very easy just to
press both the edges of the hem and then follow the natural line of the grain so you get a nice straight line. It's using some steam to
get it all flat and lovely. Now, back to sewing. As always, with our practice, taking time to make
sure our jaws relaxed, our shoulders, our neck, and that we're breathing
slow and easy. This might be a
new skill for you. Sometimes we need
to concentrate. That can get us clenching our jaw or holding our breath,
which isn't very good. We don't need to do that
starting with a fastening knot, then we're just going to
simply travel around. Just like how we
attach the tabs, we're going to use
the fell stitch. Now you've been doing
this fell stitch a while. You might notice it getting
neater and more even enjoying this slow time to
create something beautiful. Just carrying on with
that same fell stitch. When we get to the corner, I like to do a knot there
just to secure that. And then we just turn our work and work along
the width of the fabric. I normally like doing
another bonus here too. Now this curtain
is not that wide. This isn't essential,
but I still find you can get a
little bit wonky. It's nice to put
a pin at the end, then a pin midway, just to make sure
you stay straight. If your curtain is wider, you might want to put
three or four pins or more just to keep
it all straight. Now I'm working along
to that midway pin. I can remove that. Then I just work all the way
along to the pin. At the end, we just turn as
we did at the beginning, a nice not there. And then working down this edge to hide that bit
that we've folded over, I just fasten the two
sides together and sort of sneak that folded
piece of fabric away. So it disappears, there we go, all the way down a
nice fastening knot. And then we make that disappear by swing back in and along, that's our hem, all finished
and looking lovely. Now all we need to do
is press our curtains. This linen loves being crumpled. As soon as you handle it, it gets all crumply. Just taking a moment to
press the entire curtain, all the way up to the tabs. Now your curtains
are ready to hang. Now your curtains are finished. Let's head to the final
lesson to wrap up.
8. Goodbye and Well done!: Well done, You are complete. Congratulations on
finishing your curtains. It's a great idea
to take a moment to celebrate and reflect
on the process. How can you celebrate for me
every day as a celebration? Seeing the way the light comes through the textured
woven linen. When I drink my coffee, you might like to
celebrate by taking some pictures and putting
it on social media. Inviting some friends around for a cup of tea so they can admire your beautiful curtains or come up with your own idea
and how to celebrate. It's also a really nice to
reflect on the process. What did you learn?
What was hard? What was easy? What would you
do differently next time? Now we've celebrated ourselves and reflected on the process. It's time to say goodbye. No skill share is
all about community. So let's connect. If you
head to the Discussions tab, you can ask me any questions
about the project. It really helps me
if you can leave a review whether you finish
the curtains or not, It's just really nice
to get some feedback on my teaching style and whether
you enjoyed this class. So please take a moment
to leave a review. It really helps new
students find this class. Please share a photo of your finished curtains in the project section I'd love to see. And if you're going to
share them on social media, please tag me at
Laura Lamb Hashtag, Folk Sewing with Laura. You can head to my teacher
page where you can follow me, So you'll be first to
hear about new classes. And there you'll also see the
other classes that I have on offer on my teacher page. You will also find links
to my social media. You can also sign up
for my e mail list. I send out friendly e
mails every once in a while with projects I'm working on and
things I'm learning. May the magical art of
sewing bring more peace, patience, intention, and
beauty into your life. Thanks so much for
watching. Bye.
Laura Lamn, Singer / Seamstress / Sound Engineer
