IKEA Merete Curtain Hack

My IKEA turned Pottery Barn-esque curtains are done! I started off this project by just assuming I'd take some IKEA Merete curtains and add black ribbon to them. See my original vision here. (I also decided to stick with the vertical stripes instead of going horizontal, spending more on ribbon and stirring up any OCD tendencies that lining up those stripes across panels would have caused).

Of course, in typical "me" fashion, once I started I realized with just a few more tweaks I could get them to a whole other level. First up, I had four 57"x98" panels of the Meretes. This was great for a nice full look and I decided I'd deconstruct the side hems and give them a quick once over with the sewing machine to take the four panels and make two super panels. No pesky light coming through the middle of the individual two panels to deal with. This was super easy to do with a seam ripper. Match up the two right sides and re-sew. Nothing to it.

But...once I started, I sort of couldn't stop. I decided that I wasn't crazy about the grommet tops on the Meretes and I had plenty of length in the panels to cut them off and create a new hem at the top. My goal was to get a pleat in there and hang them on drapery hooks so I could really mimic the look of the Pottery Barn Ribbon Edge drapes that I was going for.



I'm not totally sure what pleat they are using on the Pottery Barn drapes but I was inspired by these curtains from Urban Grace Interiors to try a two-finger Euro pleat. I used this tutorial to work through the measurements and just modified the actual pleat to look more like the Euro pleat. I have no idea if I did it right or not, but they're all uniform and I'm happy so whatever.

So armed with 10 yards of 3" wide black grosgrain ribbon from MJ Trim (they don't have this on their website but you can call and order), I laid the drapes out on the kitchen island to get to it.



I first went at this with some Stitch Witchery which proved to be complete crap. I followed the directions exactly, let it sit to adhere and 10 minutes later the entire length of ribbon fell right off when I picked up the drapes. Yea...thanks.



I then decided to use the hem tape that actually comes with the Merete curtains to see if that was any better. And it was! I had to cut double lengths to adhere the ribbon because it was so wide which made me run out pretty quick, but this stuff is the real deal.



So one hour later, I had one finished panel using this IKEA hem tape but had no more hem tape to do the other panel. And I was DETERMINED to finish this project. Daisy was getting restless waiting for me to finish.



After a quick look through my pile of craft supplies, I pulled out some Fabri-Tac and decided to give it a try.



The next panel went SO MUCH faster using the fabric glue. I was so annoyed that I'd wasted an hour with that silly hem tape. Literally just a few lines of this glue were all I needed for a good bond AND it's washable which is awesome.



With the ribbon on and drying, I turned my attention to the clips to hang the whole thing from. I had lots of packages of the Riktig Ogla curtain rings which were perfect except for the clip at the end. A little magic with some needle nose pliers was all that was needed to convert these to clips I could use with my drapery hooks though. I just opened up the wire that held the clip in place, pulled the clip off, closed the wire and threaded the drapery hook through the resulting hoop.




By the time I did all 24 clips, the glue was dry and they were ready to be hung. Yay!



Here they are all hung up and being "trained". This is an important step for anyone out there making their own pleated drapes. I learned about it from Janel on Isabella & Max Rooms. Basically all you're doing is gathering all the fabric together and tying it off with fabric remnants. I left them hanging like this for 3 days. When I untied them, they looked like this!



Not bad for some sewing, IKEA curtains and glue right? I love how they turned out and I love how full they are.

Total cost for these:
2 packages of IKEA Merete Curtains: $40.00
10 yards of 3" wide black grosgrain ribbon: $27.00
2 packages of drapery hooks: $2.00
TOTAL: $66.00

That's compared to $69.99 (now that they're on sale) PER PANEL for the Pottery Barn Ribbon Edge drapes. And even that's not a great comparison because those panels are only 50" wide while mine are 114" wide. Even if I bought 4 panels of the PB drapes, I'd have a black stripe going down the center of the each side. But in order to achieve the same fullness, I'd need to drop $279.96 on 4 panels. So yea...I'm happy.

Also, as an aside - now that the curtains are up you can really see what I was talking about with the curtain width, space for the window seat and bookshelves on the left. The duct tape on the carpet is still the original size of the Expedit shelf I wanted to use for the window seat. I figured out that the shelves can actually be cut down with a rotary saw so that might be the solution there. But that still leaves the matter of extra seating...