Frilly Fru-Fru Project #1: Ruffles, Rumples, & more Ruffles Curtains

When the wind blows through my living room window I want my curtains to daintily dance as each ruffled  & rumpled row gracefully moves with the breeze!

So the inspiration was born immediately when I saw the light airy gray curtains from Urban Outfitters. My desires for my Frilly Fru-Fru Curtains started Grand! I was going to cover the whole panel with ruffles and more ruffles.  Just like this:  Aren't these lovely cascading curtains inspiring. Well, the inspiration went out the window as soon as I started making these suckers.  WARNING: They are adorable but they are time consuming.  Also, use the RIGHT kind of no fray fabric.  It took me 2 days working on them for 4 hours each day. This may not seem like a lot of time for some but for me it was waaaay too long to spend on a project. It was worth it though. So I tweaked my idea to partial ruffles like this:
The fabric I bought for this project was not NO-SEW friendly so that meant that I had to sew each ruffled row on both sides.  So my curtains went from this to 6 rows of ruffles and rumples on my curtains.  It still looks great and sometimes when your lazy and sewing is not fun for you tweaking your original idea is okay :).  The lady from A Drop In the Bucket blog here used bed sheets and cut them up which apparently this fabric didn't need to be sewed from both sides so all she had to do was sew it on her main panel and voila she was done.  A Drop in the Bucket blog which also has a tutorial says "it was pretty darn easy to re-create and so much cheaper".  In my experience this was not the case because of the fabric I used. On the bright side though they were so much cheaper to make.
 

Tutorial for all of you who didn't use no fray fabric for your ruffles or for some reason feel the need to sew both ends of your ruffles:
1. Lay your fabric out
2. I folded my fabric in 1/2 twice so that I was cutting lots at one time. It made my cutting easier.

3. I used a book the width I wanted and used that to measure each row.  This helped ensure that all my rows were the exact same size.  If rulers work for you than go with that.

4. Once all your rows are outlined on the fabric start cutting away.
5. I used a simple zig zag stitch on the side of the ruffled rows that would hang down and I folded in the side that I sewed onto the panel.
6. I sewed all of these zig zag rows first.

7. Then I folded in the other side of the rows and pinned them on to the fabric.  I started pinning each row leaving about 1inch hanging over the hem of the row before it. So each row overlaps about an inch.
8. I did this for 5 rows that was ALL I could handle.

This is NOT the finish product. I still need to add a row of rumples at the top.  It will go in our new house which we are not in yet so you won't get the whole effect til later.