DIY Home Decorating Idea: How to Pinch-Pleat IKEA Curtains

After a solid year of having to wear pants at all times in my house, for Christmas I am finally getting myself the gift of curtains. Even if you do want to wear pants all the time and don’t worry about the neighbors judging your TV-watching choices, curtains are an excellent way to pull a room together and make everything look elegant and finished. Unfortunately, they can be very expensive. Enter this budget solution.

Between the rods and hardware necessary to get the curtains up above the windows, prices start to add up, and it can be difficult to find curtains on a budget that do not look like budget curtains. Luckily, there is a hack for that.

Starting with an ordinary pair of Lenda curtains from IKEA, Linda from Calling it Home shows how to get a significantly more high-end look by adding pleats and a patterned border with Stitch Witchery and some simple sewing. A bit of buckram at the top gives the fabric shape, and some weights in the hem keep them hanging nice and straight.

It takes a lot of measuring to get the pleats that exact, but the end result looks like a pair of much more expensive curtains. One could also use the tutorial to just start from scratch and make pinch-pleated curtains from fabric.

Check out the full instructions and plenty more photos (including of the cute dog) over at Calling it Home.

Via Ikea Hackers