Blackout curtains

First of all, thank you to all of you that contacted me after my last post. It was so encouraging to hear from others who have or have had similar struggles with anxiety. And I hope my post was of encouragement to you as well.

I meant to post this a few days ago, but I guess that's how these things go. This past weekend, I decided to try my hand at some drapes. What prompted this was that J had to work some weird hours recently, so I slept in our guest room so that I wouldn't wake him and vice versa. I've also spent a few nights in the guest room during the sleeping troubles. I love sleeping in the same bed as J, but I needed to spread out a bit when I was struggling with insomnia the worst. While sleeping in that room, I noticed that it gets a lot of sunlight and streetlight. I know some people aren't too light sensitive while sleeping, but I certainly can be, and I decided that some of our guests might be as well. And there is something so nice about being a guest in a room with some good drapes (or maybe it's only me). So, I decided to use some extra fabric I had to make some blackout curtain attachments to our existing drapes. Hopefully, the pictures will help explain.

I mostly followed this tutorial I found online. It will probably explain better than I can.

I purchased some blackout liner online for the backs of the drapes and cut my fabric to size (4 inches larger than the space I wanted to cover on all sides).

This is my makeshift way of cutting out some of the light.

I followed the tutorial, making my hems a little shorter. I folded about 4 inches down and ironed flat.

You then unfold and fold the unfinished edge to the crease, iron, fold again and iron again. This will make a nice finished edge to sew.

Sew that edge

Like so.

Do the same with the drapery lining, making the folds a little shorter. Then, line up the lining and the fabric, right sides together and stitch down the side.

You then will scootch the liner over to the other side and sew that side too.

You then need to flip the inside out so that the fabric overlaps to the back of the drape.

Tuck in the corners and stitch.

I then folded up the last bottom edge like the first hem (double folded) and sewed that to finish it off.

On the existing drapes, I added some velcro to attach the pieces together. I actually decided that velcro didn't work as well as I had hoped, so I did something else for the other drape.

But this is how the two attach. They can be detached and the regular curtain can be rolled up to look like it usually does (we'll get to that).

Second drape.

On this side, I sewed little loops with ribbon onto the blackout drape and buttons to the existing one.

Without blackout drape (normal).

With blackout drape. Sleeping time! I am aware the patterns don't match and it doesn't look perfect, but it was more of a functional project than an aesthetic one. Also, I don't have the fabric from the top curtain, since those were a purchase from Country Curtains.

Anyway, it works really well to dim all the morning light in that room. Especially since the existing drape only went halfway down. It also gave me the opportunity to learn how to make drapes. It was actually pretty easy, so I feel pretty confident in doing it larger scale in another room. And I would definitely suggest checking out the link I posted above if you plan on making your own. I found it much more detailed than my post is. :) Also, blackout lining is super awesome. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!