DIY Shower Curtain With Grommets

I’ve been having problems in the bathroom. No, this isn’t a set up for a poop joke. I’ve been having a shower curtain issue since we moved in. If you know me, or if you saw my sitting room makeover, you know that I like floor to ceiling curtains. This includes shower curtains.

In our last home in Texas, I bought a regular shower curtain and added a foot or two of fabric to get it to the length I wanted and showed you a little peep at the guest bathroom in my Vinyl Record Butterfly post. Buying a ready made shower curtain and adding fabric is, by far, the easiest way to get the job done for my particular bathroom issue.

BUT… the tricky part is finding a shower curtain that you like that’s the right kind of fabric. You want a fabric curtain to make this work. Sewing a vinyl curtain is a bit tricky since every little needle hole would weaken the vinyl and after some use, it really wouldn’t hold up. No bueno. So, I’ve been on the lookout for a curtain that I liked. I was even looking at table cloths and regular curtains. Nada. So, I made my own. I really like the stripey trend but, by making it a DIY job, I was able to pick the exact colors that I wanted and I even snagged a Kona cotton that matches the our master bedroom dresser perfectly.

Unfortunately, this project requires a bit of math… but if you have 96″ ceilings, feel free to snag my math and save yourself the headache.  A standard shower curtain is about 72″ x 72″, so I grabbed two yards (72″) each of three different fabrics.

To leave some room for the curtain rod and the hanging hardware,I wanted to finished length of the shower curtain to be 90″. I also knew that I wanted the top part of the curtain to be white so that it wouldn’t block out a ton of light like the one in the old guest bathroom did. There’s nothing worse than missing an entire kneecap when shaving your legs because your shower is too dang dark.

So, here’s the plan:

The cut widths are on the right, I used half inch seam allowances just to keep the math easier on my blonde brain. The top and bottom both have 1.5″ hems. I love a big bottom hem on a curtain and a larger top hem will give you enough room to add the grommets. After lots of cutting, measuring and ironing, I had the curtain all sewn together according to the drawing above (so profesh). I went back and used my serger to clean up the seams on the backside of the curtain, but that’s totally optional and just a preference. I serged them all except for the seam between the top two stripes, which I’ll get to later.

Some of the sides were a bit wonky…

…but I went back a did some trimming and then hit it with my serger to clean up the edges. Again, not necessary, just a preference.

Then I hemmed the sides with a little 1/4″ allowance to keep the curtain as close to 72″ wide as possible.

Okay, another tricky part: Since the curtain is fabric and not vinyl, you obviously need a liner. Rather than add a second curtain rod to hang the liner, I bought a lightweight fabric liner to sew to the new fabric shower curtain right under the top white panel. Attaching the liner right under the top white panel, rather than attaching it at the top, will make the liner hang at the right length.

But first, grommets. To measure for the grommets, I used my serger to cut off the top part of the liner that has the curtain hook holes.

Then I used that to measure the new curtain for the grommet holes.

Shower curtains have 12 curtain hook holes and grommets come in packs of 10, so, it’s kinda a hot dog and bun situation here. This is the part that makes this DIY not so thrifty, but, if you’re getting exactly what you want, then, you’re getting a good deal, right?

Attaching the grommets is super easy, but a little hard to explain, so here’s a pic. So easy, y’all. It’s best to do this on a concrete floor, please don’t do this on tile, guys. There are hammers involved.

Liner time.  I said earlier that I didn’t serge the seam between the top white panel and the first blue stripe, I did this so I would have a good spot to attach the liner without leaving a visible seam on the front of the curtain.

I could have attached the liner earlier in the process, but, I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t super confident about my math and I saved it until the end.

I sewed the liner right to that little flap.

All done!

Here you can see what I’m talkin’ about with the liner and attaching it under the top white panel:

I will hang at the right length to keep all the shower sprinkles in the tub.

So here’s the bathroom sitch before the new curtain:

And after:

After months of looking at a short shower curtain, I’m pretty pumped to have this done. I’ve been showering more lately so I can really enjoy my handiwork.

Whaddya think? Are you into floor to ceiling curtains or is it just me?