DIY Shower Curtain Upgrade

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Our list of things that we want to update in this house is extensive. Do you remember your beanie babies collection? Like that, but of things we want to change in this house.

The bathrooms, in particular, are really, really old.

Most rooms have had some light updates since the '70s but the bathrooms haven't really been touched. When we first moved the ~master bath~ toilet wasn't flushing correctly, it would randomly flush itself every now and then. As we were fixing it (Dave says it was a "chain issue") we saw that the toilet itself was made in 1964. She's an old girl but she's still doing the work.

When we moved in, this bathroom looked particularly dated with the light, tile, and fixtures.

Very '60s and not in a fun, kitchy way.

The first thing to go was the toilet seat. Let's not talk about it.

The second thing? This terrible shower curtain and hooks that absolutely refused to stay on.

My gut instinct was a white textured shower curtain which we got two of (one for each bathroom) from Amazon for about $20. 

We're not planning on updating any of the big stuff (the tile, bathtub, toilet, vanity, and light are all staying). So all the updates we're making are more like an inexpensive bathroom makeover rather than a renovation. 

With the shelves styled it was already a huge improvement but I couldn't deal with the '80s weird watercolor shower curtains. (PS love you Atelier Cologne* and Bioderma*) 

But, the white curtains alone looked a little too blah. It's a pretty small bathroom (you can see all of it in the photo above) and I'm a strong supporter of going for strong design features in bathrooms.

Not that I'm saying black trim on a shower curtain is a wild design choice, but it needed a little more oomph.

It's like eyeliner for your shower curtain. It's totally cool without it, but the extra effort is kind of worth it.

And so, to our $20 textured shower curtains*, I added a binding from cheap black twill fabric I got for a cool $5 for two yards. I probably only used one yard for both curtains.

Making binding is incredibly easy so long as you're comfy with a sewing machine and cutting fabric.

You will need:

• A shower curtain*
• Minimum half a yard of a low or no-stretch fabric
• Rotary cutter and mat (or scissors if you are very patient)
• Iron and ironing board
• Sewing machine and matching thread
• A sewing needle for hand sewing

First things first: cut the enclosed seams off of your shower curtain. Trust me on this! On the first one I didn't do this and in the corners, there is so much fabric most sewing machines will have a really difficult time going through this.

One broken needle and an unpleasant game of the-floor-is-lava-except-it-stabs-you later, and I'm CONFIDENT that you need to cut off those original enclosed seams. Then and only then can you add the binding.

To make the binding itself cut strips of your fabric 2.5 inches wide and as long as you can get it. Cut a bunch of these strips and combine them with a mitered seam. This is so much easier to understand visually so check out this awesome video by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

When you have a huge pile of long, long, long binding, fold it in half and iron.

From there you can follow the same video linked above for sewing the binding on, folding it over, and making sure it's attached on both sides.

Even when I removed the original seams the corners are still super bulky so I had to sew the backside of the corners on by hand.