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Hemming Ikea Curtains

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While Kay was in the army last November, I decided to spontaneously visit IKEA after work one day. It was the first time I ever went by myself. I went in search of curtains, but I may have bought a sofa as well…

OK, I did buy a sofa, and I sure hoped that Kay would like it because I forgot to ask permission before pulling the trigger! But this post is not about our Karlstad. It is about office curtains. I was sick of not having any curtains in the office or the master bath and I knew that the sheer material I bought would not be adequate for either room without some proper curtains, so I bought four sets of cheap curtains to hem: Two for each office window and four to double up for privacy in the bathroom window.

I decided to go for this red pattern in the office, to match the orange/red sofa and I was also nervous to be buying fabric without Kay. We had such a hard time deciding fabric for the living room and bedroom and we rarely make home decor decisions without each other, but he thought the fabric was fine, so I went ahead and started hemming.

A friend mentioned that I should try hanging them and basting to see if the curtains would be the proper length and then I found this tutorial for hemming IKEA curtains on Charm Stitch.

I decided to try out pinning and sewing the curtains directly at the window as the tutorial suggested, but I opted to hang the curtains up backwards so that I wouldn’t be flipping the fabric over and possibly screwing up my hem. I also had more room to work in the living room than the office, so it was easier to set up an ironing board and sewing machine out there. Since I was going to move the curtains anyway, putting them up backwards to hem and sew was not a big deal.

First I pinned and it was good to check because IKEA curtains are sewn pretty poorly and unevenly and it was necessary to adjust a lot.

Once I was happy with the hanging I lifted the curtain up on to my ironing board and ironed the hem.

Below you can see how sometimes I needed to adapt the wonky IKEA curtain to form a straighter line.

I’m not saying my line is perfect… I just tucked it in a bit so that it would appear straight from the front side of the curtain.

Once I had ironed, I would let the curtain hang and check how even it was.

Below is an example of a curtain pinned that needed reworked.

And here was the re-pinning and ironed hem.

It didn’t have to be 100% perfect for me, but close enough.

When the hem was OK I sewed in the weights at the bottom. Then I got lazy and started straight up stapling the lead weights in because I was just that lazy… and I figured that nobody is going to tell if I stapled them or sewed them, so why expend all the extra effort?

I plopped my sewing machine up on the ironing board and sewed my hems then.

Finally when the curtains were done I took them down and re-hung them in the office with the hem facing the window.

At some point I’ll take you some nice daytime pictures of the office windows. I was happy I got these done before my little sister spent the night on our sofa bed.

After the office curtains I hemmed the four bathroom curtains and layered some plain white curtains behind a patterned white curtain that wasn’t quite opaque enough on its own.

Have you got some IKEA curtains in your home? Did you have to hem them to fit in or did you leave them long?

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Buying Used: Bernina Artista 165

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After the Bernina 330 didn’t pan out, I was frantically looking for a sewing machine because I’d already lost one of my three weekends without Kay to work on the curtains. I needed to be productive!

I was also again very uncertain which machine to buy. I couldn’t find another 330 on any UK site that would ship VAT free and I wanted something ASAP because of the Kay-situation, so I was contemplating forking over the 1325CHF for the machine in Zürich or going for an even more basic machine.

But finally… I saw a used Bernina on Swiss Ebay that caught my eye. It was an 8 year old sewing computer that could do embroidery and it was selling for a pretty fair price at 888CHF. I decided to contact the seller to end the auction a few days earlier so that I could pick it up on Saturday morning in Bern. (I totally did that with our lounge set too so that we had it in time for our house warming. Don’t be afraid to ask sellers to change their auction to suit your schedule!)

Two weekends ago, I got up at 8am on a Saturday and was on my way to Bern to pick up my Bernina Artista 165!

I had the seller meet me in Bern from his small town. The train is about an hour from Zürich, so I spent the time riding home reading the user manual in English on my iPhone. The one that came with the machine is obviously German, which is great and all… but I wanted to know what to do immediately!

Back at home I had some lunch and taught myself how to wind and load the bobbin, thread the machine and use the needle threader, which I’ve never had before. The sewing machine only came with one needle and one bobbin, which was a bit weird, but aside from a missing thread cutter and power cord it came with all the other accessories. (Bernina’s just take standard computer cords, so it was not a big deal to grab one from our electronics bin.)

After a Skype with Kay, who was very surprised I had already been to Bern and back on a Saturday, I got to work cutting the fabric for our blackout curtains in our bedroom! See what I mean about needing the entire living room to myself?!

I worked until 1:30am hemming the blackout lining and curtain fabric and by the end of the evening I had sewn one curtain completely. I called it a night and went to bed.

I’m super excited about the eight (8!!) presser feet the machine came with as well as the very cool FHS knee lift, which is a pricey add-on for some of the 3 series machines. I think it has more stitches to choose from and more than one automatic buttonhole, which is another big upgrade in the Bernina world. If I can find an embroidery module later on, I can even do embroidery that is not possible on the 3 series! The machine also came with a hard case and an extension sewing plate that snaps on. I’m pretty impressed by the touch screen as well!

Jep, over the moon about this machine.

It’s a little hard to tell how much this machine cost when it was new or which machine compares to it now, but since I see old Artista 200s selling on Ricardo for 2500CHF, I think I got a pretty good deal and I’m very happy with all the features I’ll get to try out.

If you sew, how did you choose your machine?

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Trying to buy a Bernina

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For four months I have been searching for a new sewing machine. Finally, before we flew to the US in September I had found what I wanted:

I decided that I wanted one of the 3 series and that the lowest end, 330, would probably be more than enough for me. It has one automatic buttonhole, which I’m not even sure I’ll need since I don’t sew any buttons. But I could, right? It also has a few stitch options, 5 presser feet, a built-in needle threader and a stop start button for long stretches of sewing, which I thought could be helpful for sewing curtains. Most important is that it sews a straight line very well.

I found one on Jaycotts for £499 without VAT, which would run me around 816CHF ($916… wooo the dollar exchange dropped again!) This would save me from spending 1325CHF ($1487) buying it new in Zürich. I ordered it to be shipped to my office, hoping that it would arrive while we were gone, but when I came back it was not here. It had been almost three weeks since I ordered it, so I contacted Jaycotts and they said that DPD had probably lost it and if that was the case, Jaycotts would send me a new machine the next week.

I contacted DPD as well and didn’t receive any response from them. Apparently they are a pretty shitty shipping company and they have scores of bad reviews. I had looked up Jaycotts before ordering from them and only read good things. They didn’t mention which shipper they used during check out.

A week later, Jaycotts contacted me stating that they would not have more of these machines so they would cancel my order and refund my credit card, which happens to be Kay’s card. It seems kind of fishy… first it gets lost, then they say they’ll send a new one and then they don’t and won’t have any more.

Now I still have to check if Kay received the refund because I don’t have access to his credit card and he’s out of the country at the moment. In the mean time, I was sad that I was losing valuable sewing time while Kay is out of the way in the flat on the weekends!

Onward with the sewing search!