Nautical Nursery No-Sew Curtains

Who doesn't love nautical curtains?  I certainly do.  I knew I wanted navy & white striped nautical curtains for Peyton's nautical nursery.  Now has anyone priced nautical curtains lately?  Holy cow.  The BEAUTIFUL ones I found online were $90 a panel...A PANEL!  I couldn't believe it.  As much as I would love to have $360+ to drop on some curtains, that just isn't the case, so what do I do?  Oh you know...a little DIY.  First a little sneak peak at how they turned out...

So how did I make these DIY curtains?  Sheets.  Now I think this would have been much easier had I found two flat sheets to use.  However, I could only find a sheet set in the pattern that I liked.  I could have bought two sheet sets & only used the flat sheets, but then I would have had so much leftover & it just wasn't worth it to me.  So how much was this lovely sheet set?  $17.99.  Legit!  

I decided to start with the fitted sheet since that was going to be the most work.  I snipped a corner so I could pull out all of the elastic. 

Because this was a fitted sheet, the edges were not even.  You can see here how they made an L shape. 

So after the elastic was out, I folded the sheet in half & cut off all edges until the sheet was straight and even.  I then cut the sheet in half.  I bought a twin sheet set, so once I cut the sheets in half, they were the perfect width for my windows.  

I bought some Heat n' Bond tape & it worked perfectly.  I have used it one time before to quickly hem some suit pants for the hubby before a wedding.  It worked even better for this project.  Here is a pic of the kind I used.  This stuff is sticky gold.  Love it.

So how does it work?  You stick it along the edge of your fabric with the nonpaper side down.  Then you run the iron over it for a few seconds (read the package instructions for a better estimate, haha) 

Once that is cool to the touch, tear the paper off, fold your fabric over & iron over the fabric again, this time for a little longer.  I made sure that when I decided where to place the bonding tape, I left space for a hole to put the curtain rod through.  

Because I cut the sheet in half & this was the fitted sheet, I used bonding tape on three of the four edges.  The only side I didn't have to use it on was the edge of the sheet that I didn't cut.  

Now for the flat sheet, this was easier in some ways & harder in others.  The part that was the easiest?  Definitely the top hem.  Because flat sheets typically always have a hemmed part at the top, I only had to cut a hole in the edges to allow the curtain rod to fit through.  

Because I also cut this sheet in half, one side of the edges didn't look very good.

So I did a little snip...

Then I used the bonding tape to fold the fabric inward so it looked more finished

This is what all of the edges I left finished looked like.

One thing of note if you use a sheet set...once you cut the fitted sheet to make it straight, it will be shorter than the flat sheet.  So I cut off the flat sheet to the same height as the finished fitted sheet curtains.  

If you can find two flat sheets, I definitely recommend using those instead.  It will make your life easier & this project will take less time.  However, if you can only find the pattern you like in a sheet set & it's more economical, it is possible to make that sheet set look like beautiful curtains.  : )  Here is the finished project.