This is a separate post dedicated to the AIRSTREAM CURTAINS.

Disclaimer: I’ve never made pinch-pleat curtains or anything resembling other than cafe curtains in my life. Sure, I’ve sewn lots of things but curtains and upholstery and home decorating are not where my talents lie. I read on Airstream forums that people were paying $2000-$3000 to have these curtains made so I thought, heck, I’ll save some money and try. Despite the pleas on the forums, “How do you get the Airstream curtains off of the rail (track)?” – I looked and it’s not that hard. (By the way, you just follow the rail to the end and unscrew the screw or the housing with the screw. SAVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU REMOVE.) Hmm, how hard could curtains be? I bought some beautiful fabric from Tonic Living in Toronto and lining from a local fabric store. A friend said you need to buy BUCKRAM. What is that, you ask. It is a stiff, interfacing-like border-like roll that gives you a non-floppy top and bottom to your fabric. Seemed simple enough. In hindsight, after putting the curtains up, I would have skipped this buckram business. I made two panels without it and the curtains turned out fine. There, I just saved you a migraine.

I took off all the panels from the living/eating area of the Airstream. I NUMBERED THEM as I took them off and wrote on a piece of paper (#1 or whatever) and safety pinned the note to the curtain and then made a diagram of where that one came off of in the trailer. This is very important. The windows are all different heights and widths and if you are going to duplicate the curtain panel, you need to know where it goes when you are done. I numbered them and numbered the copy when I made it. I measured how big the curtain was without the pleating (stretch out the curtain in the middle to see how big it goes) and then how high/wide it was with the pleating done. It is a good idea to have a sheet of paper with all of your measurements and notes on it. When you cut, I made a panel for the Tonic Living fabric and the lining the same size. Then just sewed them together. Leave a space in the sewing and turn them right-side out. Iron well. Then make the pleats so they measure it is the size of the finished curtain. I made inverted pleats because my husband didn’t want “old lady” curtains. Some advice: Pleating tape is vastly easier that what I did. I would use the pleating tape if I had to do it over again. Much easier. It’s here on Amazon:

Triple Pinch Pleat

Then you have to sew on the weird hardware that Airstream curtains have on them. It’s called a G-glide and you can buy replacements here: Curtain Tracks

Do not try to salvage the hardware from the old curtains. I had saved a few of the plastic *gliders* and one of them broke as I slid it onto the track. You can order this hardware from AirstreamUse a dense zigzag stitch to put them on. Look at the original curtains to see where the hardware goes. Do exactly the same way.

Airstream puts a small square of Velcro on the inside (lining) corner of each curtain and the corresponding piece on the wall to hold the curtain in place. I noticed my Airstream curtains had the hook side of the Velcro on the curtains which is kinda dumb because if you wash them, everything will stick to the hooks. So cut a small piece of the fuzzy part and sew it onto the corner of the curtain and then do the hook part in a small square glued to the wall.

Measure the before size (before doing pleats) of your curtain and make sure the *after* size of the curtain with the pleats done equals the one you are replacing. Does that make sense? What I am saying is make sure the pleats-pulled size is equal to the old curtain size (your sample you are working from). There is a ratio of non-pleated to pleated. I think the pleats eat up like three inches each. So allow for that.

If you have any questions, message me.