No Sew Custom Length Rivta Curtains

Today I'm going to show you how I made these $40.00 custom length no-sew curtains for our family room! 

If you recall, this is a what our family room looked like prior to us moving in. The previous homeowners hung the curtains right above the window, which many people do, however in my opinion it visually shrinks the height of that wall and window. That said, I knew when coming up with a design plan for the family room that I wanted tall hanging curtains that sat closer to the ceiling. 

Knowing that I wanted tall hanging curtains, but not wanting to pay an arm and a leg for custom ones, I began searching for affordable long curtain panels that I could hem down to custom size. I came across the Rivita Curtains from Ikea, so while I was in Canton, MI a few weeks back I picked up a pair. They either come in 98" long or 108". I got the 108" length pair , but I could of probably gotten away with the 98" ones. 

Ikea Rivita Curtains: $34.99

Next, I washed and dried the curtains on the hottest setting.  This will shrink the fabric some. I did this so that if we had to wash them in the future after they were hemmed, they won't shrink more. After they were dry, I then ironed the curtains. It's very  important that the curtains are ironed flat so that you have the most accurate measurement of the length of the curtain panels (you'll see why later how I know this).  Then, hang them on the curtain rod so you can determine the length you want the curtain panels. (For reference, we hung our curtain rod 10 inches above the top of the window) 

Now determine the height that you want your curtains, and clip the sides. You could also just use a measuring tape, but I'm a visual person so I like to do it this way. I clipped it about a half of an inch off the ground. 

  Now clip the other side. It's okay if at this point the two sides are not at the exact height. This will be corrected in the next step. 

I then took the curtain panels down to our basement and laid them flat on the floor, and made sure that both sides of the curtain panels would be hemmed at the same height. For my curtains, I had a 19 inch hem (hence why I could of used the 98 inch curtains)

 I then clipped the fabric together so that my measurements wouldn't get messed up as I carried the curtain panel to my ironing board. 

Next Iron, the crease. 

I then cut off the majority of the access fabric, because a 19 inch hem would look funny.  I cut the fabric so there was about two inches left. 

This is what it looked like after I removed cut off the access fabric. Notice how it's okay that the line isn't perfectly straight. 

I then used stitch witchery to create the hem. I laid a long piece in the middle of where the hem will lay, and my husband held one side together as I started ironing the other side. You could easily do this part yourself, my husband just likes being involved in projects:)

 Also, the stitch witchery package I got came with a plastic looking tape and a lace looking tape. I used the plastic looking one on the first panel, and the lace looking one on the second panel. I couldn't really tell a difference. If there is supposed to be a difference, please let me know in the comments below!

Next, iron the hem. Let the iron sit on a small area at a time for about 10 seconds so that the stitch witchery can adhere well. 

 I've never really even ironed before, so this was also a learning lesson for me. On the second curtain panel I realized that using the steam setting also helped tremendously, and made the adhesion process go faster. 

After you have ironed the hem, it's now time for hanging them on the rod! The Ikea Rivita curtains has several different ways that you can hang them. I chose to hang them as such:

 After I hung them, I used my Conair steamer to steam out the remaining wrinkles. It did such a great job steaming though , that it made the curtains longer than I wanted because apparently I didn't iron them flat enough to start off with. The length still looks good in my opinion, and the sectional will cover a lot of it, so it won't matter all that much anyways.

I hope you liked this tutorial! If you try it out yourself, I'd love to see a picture of them! Also, let me know what you think in the comment section below,  find me on Facebook, and see what I'm up to via Instagram!