The DIY Cafe Curtain experiment, and my new friend the Grommet

For the last  year or so, I've been looking for nice kitchen curtains and could never find what I thought I had in mind.  I've been watching those Home improvement shows on HGTV, so I decided on making my own cafe curtains.  You know,  those shows make all of the DIY projects so easy, and for sure I could dress my drab kitchen window in no time at all, right?

Oh, silly silly me, I let the power of  TV shows, producers and good editing pull the wool over my

eyes yet once again.  My DIY cafe curtains took a full weekend to complete.  It wasn't a difficult task, but, since I was only working with measurements and not an actual pattern, (I have a hard time following somene elses' patterns; and, do they even make patterns for curtains? ).

I'm blogging about this for two reasons, one being that I like the outcome of the curtains, but the other, to let you in on a cool find.  The "No Tools Required" Curtain Grommets by Dritz Home. 

Have you seen or used these? I've never seen them until now, so I don't know if they are new, but I do know that they are genious. 

I was sold on the fact that no tools are required, and I envisioned them looking nice on my linen cafe valance.

I got the 1 inch Grommet packages at my local Joann store. I'm guessing they must be a hot item, because there weren't many left on the shelves, and the other stores in the area had,  either none left, or limited supply.  A bit pricey at $10.99 for each package containing 8 of the 1 inch Grommets, but you'll find that the ease of using them is worth  the price.  They are also re-useable, so if you decide after some time that you want to get rid of your curtains and make a purse out of them instead, you can just use a screwdriver (or in my case,  a butter knife) to pop apart the grommet and apply it to something else.

I want to show you how easy (and fun) these are.  I used this only on the valance part of my linen curtains to give a rich colored contrast.  You get this neat little plastic template that gets rid of any guesswork for you.  Just place it on your fabric where you want your first grommet to be located, mark it , and then cut the circle out of the fabric.

I wasn't sure if there were any rules to how far apart the spacing should be, and the package didn't have any specifications for that, so I just went with every 6 inches.  Notice how I didn't cut the full circle that I traced from the template?  I was scared that I was going to mess something up, so, for the first few, to be on the safe side, I went slightly smaller and stretched my fabric over the inside Grommet lip. After a while, I realized that the only way you can mess up is to cut a circle larger than the template.

 Each Grommet comes with a front part and a back part.  The front part has the circular lip that acts as a guide for the fabric and holds it in place while you snap the other part onto the back side.  I don't think installation could be any easier.

If you're interested in purchasing these for a project, you can click here to order from Joann.com.

Would love to hear some of the great ideas and projects that anyone else has used these for.