Wall Hanging to Black Out Curtain

I am not a decorator – AT ALL! I have lived in my new home for 5 months now and I am only just now getting around to hanging things on the walls. In fact until Saturday morning – we literally had blue taped blankets and sheets over Anne’s windows instead of hanging curtains!

Well that has all changed. I finally made some decisions and Anne’s room is starting to look more like a little girl lives in there as opposed to a wondering gypsy. I bought some black out curtains from Target for her big window – in fact Anne picked out the color!  Here is a link to them.  I love the color and I think they will last a good amount of time because of the color.  I also found the cutest curtain rods!  My bestie Lisa asked me how can curtain rods be cute and I told her she just had to see them.

Now the pièce de résistance is what I did for her small window. There is a random 2 ft by 2ft window in her room that needed covering. As soon as I saw it I knew that I wanted to hang a beautiful, yet simple, wall hanging over it but for the life of my I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do it. Well a solution hit me on Thursday morning – I turned it into a black out curtain!

I didn’t take pictures of what I did to make it a black out curtain, but it is so simple I don’t really think you need them.

You will need:

A wall hanging (this one is quilting and very old)
Coordinating 1″ wide ribbon
Black out curtain lining (any big box fabric store should have it!)
5/8″ Heat n’ Bond fusible tape

Step one  – cut your black out lining to be 1/2″ smaller on all sides than your wall hanging

Step two  – cut four strips of Heat n’ Bond – same length as black out liner – fuse to black out lining (this may take extra time, I used a teflon pressing sheet to protect both my iron and the lining. The teflon sheet was only $9.00)

Step three – fuse black out liner to back of wall hanging (this serves dual purpose – it will black out light in the room and it will protect the front of the wall hanging from light damage) – this will take awhile – be patient!

Step four – cut lengths of ribbon – this will vary based on the width of your curtain rod and how high you plan on hanging them – measure carefully!  You can hand sew these to your wall hanging or you can fuse them with the heat n’ bond tape (that’s what I did).

Step five – hang them up and enjoy!

Anne loved her new curtains and kept pointing at the new one and saying bears.

Hope you had a lovely weekend!