Updating IKEA Ritva curtains with Greek Key Trim

I love IKEA for many reasons.  They have great, affordable finds that can easily be transformed and made to fit your own personal style.  One of my favorite IKEA finds are their curtains.  It's hard to find long curtains (95" or longer) without paying a fortune.  Most big box stores don't even carry longer lengths.  I particularly love the Ritva curtains and recommend them to a lot of my clients.  They are simple and have a nice subtle texture.  They come in a few different colors, but I prefer the white.  They can also be easily updated if you want more of a custom feel.  I don't like to make a huge commitment with my window treatments because I change my mind frequently.  I'd rather make bold choices in the small details that can easily be changed.  However, my office was starting to look a little too white.  The curtains were white, the sewing table is white, the rug is white, the filing cabinet is white...you get the idea.  So, I decided a good place to add a punch of color and pattern would be the curtains.  I started off thinking I would paint them to look something like this.

via

But, the more I thought about it the more I thought it might look like I just let my one year old go crazy with my curtains.  I even did a little trial run, but it did not go so well.

So, here's the before.  Really unstaged, poor photo quality, but it will make the after that much better.

I started with this premier prints fabric from fabric.com.  You'll notice it looks a little red and the white looks a little cream.  Well, something I like to do when I'm searching for fabric is to do a google image search of the fabric.  A lot of times you will find the fabric used in a home, for a pillow on Etsy, or on a blog and you can see it in different lighting and get a better feel for what it really looks like.  I did that with this fabric and found a pillow on Etsy that revealed that the fabric was much more pink/white than the fabric.com photo which is what I needed.  So, I went with it. 

 I wanted to add some greek key trim, but I couldn't find any in the color I wanted or the size I wanted and it was a little pricey.  I knew I wanted it to be wide so it would make a big impact.  So, I ordered 3 yards of fabric and just cut it into strips.  Then, I turned the edges under ironed them and pinned it to the edges of my curtains.  The trim ended up being about 4 inches wide.  I also have a decent amount of fabric leftover to use for other projects.  I ended up paying around $20 for all the fabric I needed.

And here they are all finished.  I decided to add trim to both sides of the curtain panels for added impact.  I think this would look awesome on a plain white shower curtain too.  My husband walked in and said, "oh cool, it looks like Roman times."  I said thanks?  I'll take that as a compliment and he assured me that he meant it as one.

Let me just say that taking pictures of windows is really tricky so these are a little blown out.  Cate did a  post about how to fix this with online photo editing software, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

I love having a glass desk, but it leaves me with very little storage.  So, I picked up this desk drawer organizer at Garden Ridge.  The pulls were originally silver, but of course I had to spray them gold.