DIY Constellation Curtains

If you follow me on instagram you might have seen me working on these curtains a few weeks ago.  I actually finished them a while back, but I had a horrible time trying to photograph them.  These pictures are the best I could do, but I think that I like them better in real life.

These curtains are for our new "playroom" space in our new home addition. We see this room being used for playing, practicing the piano, and doing homework. I wanted the room's decoration to be an inspiring place for learning, but also just really fun.  At first I thought I'd do line drawings of molecules (sorry!  Showing my inner science geek here!) but I was inspired to do constellations on the curtains after seeing these sky napkins from Anthropologie.  My kids LOVE looking at the stars!

I thought about making my own curtains, but in the end I decided to just embellish and modify some Ikea curtains, since they were such a great price (and they saved work too!) 

Want to see how these curtains came about?  Keep reading for the complete how-to:

I purchased the LENDA curtains from Ikea, and cut off the top rings.

I folded over the top of the curtains and pinned them.  This became the passageway for my curtain rod. It helped being able to pin them all out at once so that I could make sure everything was straight.

I simply sewed it up and removed the pins:

Then it was time to lay out the constellations.  I picked 6 different constellations and free handed them on pieces of printer paper.  Then I alternated five constellations per row,  First I laid them out to just see how everything looked.

Then I placed my templates under the curtains and just traced with a fabric maker.

After I finished the row, I laid out the next line of constellations.  Since I only had 6 different constellations total, I rotated each constellation so that it would look a bit different.

I finished the two panels in less than two hours, and it wasn't near as tedious as I thought it might be.

And here they are closed with a sneak peak of the rest of the room.  I love how the curtains are mostly white from a distance, but still have a little bit of design to make things interesting :-)  What do you think?

And finally, do you follow my blog already?  Yes, awesome!!!  If not,  please consider following this blog!  I'm really trying to build my followers via email and on facebook, pinterest, twitter, and instagram.