Stenciled Curtains

There has been a lot of fabric painting going on in the blog world lately and seeing painted chairs and rugs inspired me to paint my no-sew curtains using a stencil and some fabric medium. 

I decided that my living room needed a little something more after I got most of the new stuff in place for my living room re-vamp.  What was missing was a large scale pattern and a little more green.  I was inspired by the curtains in Kirsten's living room over at 6th Street Design School.

I wanted the look of large printed medallions on my curtains, but I could not find a large stencil that was cheap.  Craft stores only had small scale stencils and the big ones that I saw online were about $40 and up.  I'd already spent more than I planned on my curtains so I was not about to sink $40+ more into them.

I bought the biggest stencil I could find at Michael's (it was $10) that looked the most like the pattern I wanted, and even though it was the biggest stencil they had, the medallion was only 8 inches.

I had to put four of the shapes together to get the size that I wanted.  That's the fabric that I tested my paint and pattern on.

The paint I used was just plain acrylic craft paint.  I had to get a few bottles to mix in order to get the color I wanted.  I added fabric medium which makes the paint not crunchy and less likely to bleed.  The bottle of fabric medium was $4.50.  I think I've read that it's available at Michael's, but I didn't see it there so I had to go to an art supply store to find it.

Once I got my paint the right color I measured how large my medallion would be and used tape to space out the pattern on my curtains.

Then I started stenciling.

Not to discourage anyone from trying this, but stenciling took so much longer than I thought it would.  I think I ended up spending about 4 hours figuring out my pattern and then stenciling my first panel.

I was so worn out from the first curtain panel that I waited a couple of nights to get started on the second one which didn't take as long.  For the second panel I only taped off my pattern horizontally, I wasn't as precise with the paint, and it doesn't look any different from the first panel.

Here's what my complete curtains ended up costing:

• about $40 for the fabric and Heat 'n Bond
• $10 for the stencil
• $8 for acrylic paint and paint medium

$58 is more than I'd budgeted for the curtains, but I was able to cut costs in other places.  

Even though I spent quite a chunk of time (and money) on my curtains I'm really happy with the way they look.  And I'm looking forward to finally sharing my complete living room tomorrow. 

I'll be linking up to: