DIY Cabinet Curtains

These inexpensive, easy to make DIY cabinet curtains are ideal for any small space. The drop cloth curtains are the perfect solution to hide clutter or dress up any cabinet!

Happy Friday everyone! The weeks just fly by anymore, don’t they? Last week I shared our Lego organization and storage cabinet. This week I wanted to share with you how I disguised all the Lego containers in that cabinet. I made DIY cabinet curtains to make it look nicer and fit in with the decor better.

As I explained last week, we are living in a rental that does not have a designated space for the boys to hang out and for all their “stuff”. So the Lego cabinet is currently holding residence in our dining room. It actually coordinates really well with our dining room table as far as color of stain. Plus I knew that it would look similar to a sideboard or buffet so it did not bother me too much.

Truthfully, I love having another space to decorate! However I was not too keen on the look of all the plastic Lego containers. You can’t tell that there are Legos in them unless you look closely but it is not usually what you see in a dining room. Ha!

Lego Cabinet in Disguise!

So I decided to make some DIY cabinet curtains to cover all the plastic tubs. I did not want to spend a lot of money on fabric and wanted something neutral in color so I went with my inexpensive, standby fabric… drop cloths! The nice things about drop cloths, besides the price, are that they are a sturdy fabric and they fit in great with a farmhouse look.

Before you go thinking, well I don’t have a Lego cabinet so this does not pertain to me, think again! This cabinet curtain tutorial is not specific to just our Lego cabinet. These drop cloth curtains would be also be perfect to replace cabinet doors under the sink or even for DIY camper curtains! Really they would work for any small space where you need a curtain! Oh and did I mention, they were super easy to make! 🙂

Pleated or straight curtains?

When deciding on how to make the curtains, I had to decide if I wanted straight or pleated curtains. The vision in my head was pleated curtains like you see under a kitchen sink. I think those kind of pleated curtains are a quintessential farmhouse look. However, and I say this with lots of love for farmhouse decor, sometimes there is a thin line between farmhouse style and an 80’s country look. Amiright?! I was not wanting the curtains to look country! LOL

Mr. Wonderful thought straight curtains would look better. So I decided to make one pleated in advance to test it out. Here are the pictures I took.

In the end, as you probably already know from the picture in the intro, the pleated curtains won out! I think they look more interesting and add more character to the cabinet. What do you think?

Supplies for DIY Cabinet Curtains

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

Tension curtain rods (4)
6′ x 9′ Drop cloth
Scissors
Cutting mat, rotary cutter and 24″ ruler – this is optional, you can just use scissors to cut your fabric but this makes cutting fabric so much easier!
Sewing machine (this is a newer version of the one I use)
Iron
Sewing gauge
Straight Pins

When I was looking for supplies, I knew I would need some tension curtain rods. The only problem was that the size I needed was not found in stores. I needed a curtain rod that was 17 inches and most curtain rods that you find in the store are a lot longer than that. Also I needed them to be thinner in diameter to fit up into the recess in our Lego cabinet while still allowing a tub to go into the top “drawer”.

I ended up finding these tension rods on Amazon and they worked perfectly! If you are looking to put a curtain in a small space, these are great!

Should you pre-wash drop cloths?

So I usually give advice to wash and dry your fabric before you make projects to avoid problems with shrinking later, and also to get any extra dyes out of the fabric. However, drop cloths are a different animal. They do not have extra dye so you will not have problems with bleeding. Also, I have washed and dried drop cloths before only to have them wind up in a knotted ball in the dryer. Consequently, I was never able to get those wrinkles out no matter what I tried! I have heard that taking them out of the dryer while still somewhat damp combats this a bit, but I have not have great success with that either.

I feel like it is something to be considered on a case by case basis. For instance, if I was making a pillow cover that would be used against our skin and get dirty, I would pre-wash. There are still going to be chemicals in the new fabric that you want to get out. If you are making something that will be used frequently and need a lot of washing, then definitely pre-wash.

For this project, I knew that I would not be washing the curtains any time soon, and I did not want them to look wrinkly so I opted not to pre-wash my drop cloth.

How to make pleated DIY drop cloth curtains

Taking the drop cloth out of the package, it is somewhat wrinkly so the first step was to iron the drop cloth. Luckily these wrinkles come out! 😉

Measure the dimensions of the space you need curtains for. My space was 16⅞” x 38″ and I would need 4 curtains. When making pleated curtains, you need to add some width onto the size to account for the pleats. I was not sure how much extra width I would need so I played around with some of the cloth. I came to the conclusion that doubling the size of the width would give me the look I was wanting.

Since the drop cloth size was 6’X9′, I was going to use almost the whole drop cloth. My curtains ended up measuring 35″ x 38″ so I cut the drop cloth in half width wise along the seam in the middle. This left me with two pieces measuring 6′ x 54″.

On a side note… why do I always grab the crappiest scissors in the house!? Does that happen to you too? Especially when I have scissors that I use for fabric only anyway! And I never realize it until I am already cutting. LOL!

Next I laid those pieces on the counter individually to cut them in half again. This would leave me with four panels that measured 36″x54″.

Awwww… much better scissors!! 😉

Sewing a double folded hem

Now that I had my four panels ready to go, I needed to hem up the raw edges. I purposely left the seams on all the other sides. Might as well not do extra work, right? First I squared up the crappy scissor cut edges using my cutting mat, rotary cutter and 24″ ruler.

Next I used a sewing gauge to measure and iron down a ½” seam. Fold this seam over onto itself again and iron it down.

Now sew it down using your sewing machine. I did a double stitch to somewhat replicate what was already on the other seams.

Sew a sleeve for the curtain rod

Again using the sewing gauge (those are handy little tools!), I measured and pinned down a two inch fold on the top edge that already had a seam. I left the bottom raw edge as I knew I would be cutting some of that off anyway. Remember, I wanted to cut out the work I would have to do!

I sewed this down just using a straight stitch right above the hem.

This left me with a sleeve to insert the curtain rod. By the way, I came up with the two inch size for the sleeve by making sure it was big enough to fit the end of the curtain rod through it. Next bunch up the curtain panel on the rod to achieve the pleating look.

Dry fit your DIY cabinet curtains

At this point I tested out the curtain to make sure it fit correctly and to determine the length that I needed them to be. I wanted them to hit right above the bottom of the cabinet. I placed a pin right where I wanted them to end and added an inch to that for my hem allowance. I ended up cutting off 12 inches from the bottom of the curtain panel. Then I sewed a double folded hem at the bottom just like I did on the side.

Truth time… I made a mistake when making the third panel. I tell you this just so you can avoid making the same mistake I did. It does not have anything to do with my incessant need to point out my mistakes! 🙂 I am not even sure how this happened exactly but I think when I went to hem the side, I accidently hemmed the bottom instead. Then I used that edge for my sleeve and still cut off 12 inches from the bottom and hemmed that. So in the end, my extra double folded hem cost me about 1″ in length.

Because of that, the third panel is a bit shorter than the rest. Can you tell? Also just ignore all that dust inside the Lego cabinet. 😉 My thought was that it was not very noticeable so I just left it. In fact, I did not tell Mr. Wonderful about it and he did not notice and he notices EVERYTHING! So I think I am in the clear. Ha!

Insert the curtain rods

These curtain rods are really easy to put into place. You just adjust them to the approximate size and twist them until they are tight. They are perfect for the size I needed.

I pushed the curtain rods up into the recess and then put the bin back into place.

Voila! No more Lego containers!