No-Sew Drop Cloth Drapes With A Faux Valance

“Be faithful to your own taste, because nothing you really like is ever out of style.”
                                                             ~Billy Baldwin

Can I say that I have a real dislike for vertical blinds, because I really do!  We had them for our glass sliding doors in our previous house and I finally got rid of them.  And of course, when we moved to our current location, wouldn't you know there were vertical blinds on these doors.  So I played around on Pinterest to come up with an idea for this glass sliding door and I kept seeing drapes made out of drop cloths, as in canvas drop cloths that's used for painting!

 

I didn't want to spend a lot of money for these drapes because they are downstairs, but we still needed privacy and a way to keep the sun and the cold out of this room.  Our glass slider is 6 feet wide and I wanted the rod placed up higher towards the ceiling.  So I settled on buying two packages of canvas drop cloth from Home Depot that measured 5'9" x 8'9".  Would you believe that the first two I bought had a seam going horizontal across each of these, and smack dab in the middle!  Obviously, painters could care less, but I didn't want this for our drapes.  So back to Home Depot and before I left, the sales girl opened the packages to make sure there weren't any seams.  With tax, the total came to about $25.  I found and bought the drapery rod and rings at Target...

Mr. Cottage hung the rod and I got the rings put on.  When I got back home with the drop cloths, I washed them (to help soften) and put them into the dryer for about 20 minutes and then draped them over chairs to finish drying...

Once dried, I ironed one panel and started to clip it onto the rod.  It was a bit of hit and miss, trying to get the length where I wanted it.  For the faux valance, I folded the top towards the front and clipped it in place.  Once I determined how long I wanted these, I took them off and pressed the fold of the valance and hung them back up...

It's really hard to see that the hem of the valance is showing inside out.  For us, it's not noticeable, but if it bothers you, you could always glue some trim across it...

There's a few pros and cons to consider if you decide to go this route...

Pros

• No Sewing
• Very inexpensive
• Looks great
• Doesn't take much time

Cons

• Some packages come with seams.  You probably won't find out until you remove them, but you can return and get ones that don't have seams.
• May have specks of color.  Mine had some red and blue, but aren't noticeable when you see the entire drape hanging.

Mine are very plain, which is what I wanted.  But you can paint stripes, stencil a design, actually sew and make pleated drapes, and I even saw a few that had script written on them.  The ideas are limitless!