Newbie query!

[JM2017]

Hi all,
Newbie here! I'm currently on maternity to leave and am hoping to steal away some time and dabble in some curtain making, etc. That is of course if my bubba allows it! Today she has had other ideas 
Hoping you can help this novice here with a curtain measurement query I have re a pair of curtains I'm wishing to 'hack'. I recently bought a pair of plain blackout eyelet curtains, each panel measures 168cm wide with a 183cm drop. Now that they are hung they are rather drab looking so I want to liven them up. To this end I'm thinking of retaining approx 20cm of the plain fabric at the top of each panel to include the eyelets and unpick & cut away the remaining plain fabric & replace with a nice geometric patterned fabric I have found. I'm going to retain all the blackout lining. So my question is how many metres/yards of the patterned fabric  would I need? FYI the patterned fabric is 137cm wide, 64cm vertical pattern repeat & 68.6cm horizontal pattern repeat.
Many thanks in advance!

[maliw]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Sorry I can't help with the curtains, I make all mine but have awful problems when it comes to pattern repeats. Is the fabric in a 'bricks and mortar shop' or online? If in a shop then I would ask the staff there  as they should be able to tell  you exactly what you need, if online then sorry I'm no good. Hopefully someone else will be along and be able to help. Congratulations on the little one.

[JM2017]

Thanks for your reply. The fabric is online. Yes I'm the same when it comes to pattern repeats!

[BrendaP]

each panel measures 168cm wide with a 183cm drop. Now that they are hung they are rather drab looking so I want to liven them up. To this end I'm thinking of retaining approx 20cm of the plain fabric at the top of each panel to include the eyelets and unpick & cut away the remaining plain fabric & replace with a nice geometric patterned fabric I have found. I'm going to retain all the blackout lining. So my question is how many metres/yards of the patterned fabric  would I need? FYI the patterned fabric is 137cm wide, 64cm vertical pattern repeat & 68.6cm horizontal pattern repeat.

Welcome to the forum

You will need one and a bit widths of the patterned fabric to match the width of the existing curtains.  68.6cm horizontal repeat on a 137cm wide fabric means two pattern repeats side by side so one and a half widths for each curtain and then trim one or both sides to get the most pleasing effect.

Lengthways; You will need three full drops to make the two curtains. 
64cm vertical pattern repeat - three repeats comes to 192cm which is 24 cm longer than the existing curtain which is comfortable for the hem and the seam.  192cm x 3 = 5.76m.     If it's sold by numbers of vertical pattern repeats you need 9 full repeats, but it might be better to buy 6m as that will give you a little leeway on where to best position the pattern at the top of the curtain.

[JM2017]

BrendaP, thank you so much for all this info! I really appreciate you taking the time to pass on these details to me

[Surest1tch]

Hello and welcome  .
Do you really want to go to the trouble of unpicking part of the curtains? Im assuming with them being blackouts are for the baby's room, had you thought about getting some nursery figures and appliqueing them randomly on the existing curtains or some nursery fabric and sewing strips onto the curtains. Do it that way and you've got still got good curtains you can change as the baby grows, nursery now, Bob the builder or something when the babe is maybe 5 or 6 and so on.
Sorry if that sounds a bit out of date, my grand kids are grown up and I'm out of step with whatever's current for younger children.