DIY Euro Pleat Drapery

Pleated drapery has been around forever but will never go away. It's a small detail but makes a room look sophisticated and tailored.

[ Lonny Mag ]

[ Urban Grace Interiors ]

Recently, a client of mine purchased white linen pole pocket curtain panels from West Elm. The fabric is really beautiful and they work well for this project.

We decided to euro pinch pleat her store bought drapery because custom pleated drapery was out of our budget. Here are the DIY steps for how I did this.. it's SO easy!!

I wanted the pleats to be more casual than a traditional Persian pleat, so I just did two folds instead of three:


First measure three inches down from the end of the panel and start your pleating. As you can see, my pleats are three inches apart:


To create the pleats, pull up two folds of fabric of equal heights just like this:


Here are some other views so you can see what your folds should look like:





Then pin your pleats to get ready to sew:



I added the red line so you can see where you'll be sewing your stitch. Make sure your pin parallel to your pleat.

Make sure you pin all your pleats before you start sewing. Make sure everything looks nice and neat and the lengths in between each pleat is the same (3 inches).

Then all you have to do is sew your stitch!


The red line shows where you will be stitching. You don't want to start the stitch at the front of the pleat; start a little bit below.

Look at the green line - you want to make sure you sew each stitch in the same location to create uniform pleats. For my pleats, I lined up the top of the panel with the end of the ruler on my sewing machine. I used this guide for each pleat.. make sure you use a similar guide.

This is what I do when I sew the actual stitch: Sew forward, sew in reverse and then sew forward again. This assures a strong stitch.

And repeat until all your panels are pleated!

Here is the finished product:




These panels above are actually double width. I simple sewed two panels together to create the double width! (The windows are foggy because we steam ironed the panels).

And that's it! If you have a sewing machine, this is a very easy way to create a designer look for so much less than if you were to have custom drapery made. Of course, nothing is as great as the real thing but this is a good improvement to store-bought pole pocket drapes.

Let me know if you have any questions!