The First Great Way to Hang Your Scarf Swag Curtains

The First Great Way to Hang Your Scarf Swag Curtains

This is probably the simplest way to hang scarf swag. Draping your scarf over a simple wooden curtain rod.

All this requires other than a rod fitted over your window. Is a piece of fabric the length you need to fit as you want it to.

I use the width of the fabric as the scarf width. This is usually 54 inches wide. A little more or less is fine.

Then I measure the width of the curtain rod. Then down the sides as far down as you want the swag to hang on each side. Then add these sizes together to get the total length of the scarf.

Don't forget to add a couple of inches for hems on to the length.

The next step is to hem your scarf swag down all four sides. I have machine sewn this piece of fabric. Then hand tacked the corners down.  As they were too thick to sew on my sewing machine.

You could just as easily but slower have hand sewn the Hems. Another option would be to use hemming tape and an hot steam iron. This would work for most fabrics to hold your hems in place.

The next step is to pleat your hemmed piece of fabric. This will give the swag its shape when hanging.

In the picture to the right here you can see how the fabric is pleated back and forth. You should end up with five pleats usually.

While holding with one hand use the other to train the pleats down the fabric. It is usually easier with two people one holding each end of the swag. Then you can both pleat from each end.

Once your swag is pleated hang one end over the end of the curtain rod. As in the picture to the right.  Then hook the other end of the swag over the other end of your curtain rod. The picture below shows the swag hung over the rod at both sides. Ready for being dressed into its final finished shape.

So far very simple and nothing very complicated. It continues that way in the dressing of your scarf swag. This section is more about just teasing the swag into the shape that you want.

To start the final dressing of your scarf swag. You need to hold the top peat on the scarf and pull it gently outwards. So the fabric mover down the sides.

When you do this to both sides you will see the swag fabric rise up in the middle.

Next repeat this process for each pleat in the fabric below. When you get to the bottom pleat, you will probably see it does not hang down low enough to give you the nice swag shape.

This is because pulling up the other pleats above has caused the bottom pleats to rise as well. So use one hand to hold the upper pleats in place.

Use your other hand to pull done on the last couple of pleats. This will make the swag curve deeper.

This will give you nice evenly spaced pleats in your swag. Just like in the picture just below.

Repeat this process for both sides of your swag. Until you have it looking exactly as you want.

Some fabrics just seem to fall right almost straight away. Other fabrics seem to take forever to look just right.

Like everything else in life, practice make perfect.

Finally the only thing left to do is to sort out the “tails”. The sides of our swag that hang down each side of the window.

I do this by getting hold of all the pleats at the top just under the curtain rod. Then twist them a little to get the pleats facing more to the front. Again repeat this for both sides.

There you have it a finished scarf swag hung over a regular wood curtain rod.

With lighter fabrics you may find they slip on the rod and pull the swag out of shape. To cure this problem you will need to fix the scarf swag in place.

I use either staples or thumb tacks pushed through the fabric and into the wooden curtain rod. This fixes the scarf swag to the curtain rod so it can't move. You won't usually see the fixings as they are right on top of the rod.