Leather Tab Curtains {Sewing Leather}

I meant to get this post up last week but time got away from me. Not only am I trying to get the second of the boys’ bedrooms done, but the flu bug has hit our house again. I swear it is all I can do to keep up the regular stuff let alone the online stuff.

When trying to pick out curtains for this space, I couldn’t decide on a color or pattern. I kind of wanted white curtains but thought that would be too boring. I had some leather for another project (more on that in a bit) and it finally came to me. Leather tabs! It gives the curtains a fun, masculine touch and keeps them from looking too “country”.

I had some extra LENDA Ikea curtains in the linen closet so I simply unpicked the fabric tabs leaving little pockets for the new tabs. The leather came from our sofa. The sofa’s frame broke beyond fixing and it has had holes in the seats and armrests for awhile. Since we will need to replace it soon. I went ahead and cut the leather off the back to use for these curtains and some pillows.

I made two curtains (one for each window) and I ended up making them two different ways. At first I didn’t have a needle on my sewing machine that could handle leather so I used a hammer and nail to make holes. I made 4 holes in a square and then used thick black thread to sew Xs. Just like sewing on a button! I made two Xs per tab.

I got done with the first curtain panel and realized I would need to buy a leather needle for my machine if I wanted to make pillows. I bought these from JoAnn’s and they went through the leather like a hot knife through butter! I still added the X detail to the second curtain panel because I loved it. I just sewed it on the first layer of fabric instead of all the way through.

The leather pillows are sewn envelope style because I didn’t want to worry about adding a zipper. Sewing is not my thang and I usually avoid it if possible.

The black pillow on the bed I painted. I used the potato stamping technique to create a mudcloth type design. I used chalk to make sure the rows stayed straight. You can read more about potato stamping in this post about potato stamped curtains.