Skill Level: Easy

Time Required: Endless

Cost: $$

Alcoholic Drinks Consumed: We lost count

The Idea

Here’s how it started – we were surfing the Facebook page of The Wedding Brigade (huge wedding website for brides in India, they have an AMAZING collection of wedding inspiration pics on their FB page – check it out!) and came across this pretty pretty photo of an outdoor event décor:

Gorgeous, right?! We circulated the picture and all decided, “Wouldn’t it be a great idea if we made this curtain? How hard could it be?!” We figured we would order some tassels from Amazon, hot glue ‘em to some fabric and call it a day.

Amazon does have a ton of options for tassels but the most affordable ones were the graduation cap tassels, not the mini-tassels that we were looking for. And out of the mini-tassels that were available, we weren’t able to select specific colors. It would’ve been a bulk supply of browns, blacks, reds, oranges…you get the idea. We were already heading down the Pinterest rabbit hole, might as well dive in headfirst, right? This led us to ask ourselves, “What if we made the mini tassels instead of ordering them?”

The Supplies

First on our list was to make sure we had the right supplies for both the tassels and the curtains:

• Embroidery floss in a variety of colors (in our case a dark purple, Dulhan purple, and light pink)
• Tulle curtains (which we luckily already had)
• Sewing kit (from the dollar store, specifically you need thread and a needle)
• Scissors
• A fork (one per person)

As time went on, our supply list grew to include the following:

• Band Aids
• Copious amounts of alcohol

The cost for this project was also a bit of a surprise. Who knew embroidery floss could be so expensive?! We were able to find larger spools for 2 of our colors (twenty bucks a pop), but the shade that matched our Dulhan purple was only available in-store where they sell them in little packs costing fifty cents each. We also had no idea how many tassels we needed or how many we’d be able to make with the amount of floss we bought. The floss was absolutely the most expensive part of the project, and when it was all said and done we’d spent close to $60 on that alone.

The sewing kits were from our local Dollar Tree, and we had everything else that we needed on hand.

Making the Curtains

It’s been two weeks since I last made a tassel and I’m still having flashbacks. Aside from the amount of time it took to get through all of the floss we purchased (we did it on the weekends, ~10 AM – 11 PM, two weekends in a row), this part was actually kind of relaxing! It was mindless work and felt super satisfying to create pretty little tassels.

Getting the hang of making a tassel on the fork took us a couple of tries, but once you get into a rhythm you start knocking them out really quickly. Here’s a link to the tutorial we used for making the mini-tassels. We axed the 6-inch piece the author recommends for the top of the tassel; you don’t need that for your curtain!

The more tassels you make, the more sensitive your skin will become because of the floss. AKA, it gets painful. This is where the Band Aids come in – a few of these on the sensitive parts of our fingers and we were good to go.

Once you’re happy with the amount of tassels you have, it’s time to attach them to your curtains! We counted each color (ended up with ~ 120 pink, ~120 dark purple, and ~200 Dulhan purple) so we could map out where we wanted them to be on the curtain (6 lines including the edges, tassels to be spaced 3 inches apart). We used a marker to lightly mark the curtain and started the tedious task of sewing our tassels to the curtain. Because we were paranoid that we didn’t have enough, we also used a bunch of gota patti appliques (also from Amazon, SUPER cheap for a large order if you purchase them far in advance).

As you can imagine, it took us an insane amount of time to get all of this done. So much so that we paused several times and asked ourselves, “What the F*** are we doing?!” But we were in too deep (code for too stubborn), and frankly I wanted to see what the final product was going to look like.

The Result

And here it is! Definitely less tassel-y than our inspo pic, but a pretty piece of décor nonetheless (YES we are biased)! We also had SO many tassels leftover. I’m sure if we added them to the curtain we’d get closer to the effect of the inspiration picture, but I don’t hate myself to go through that process again.

Helpful Tip: Be smarter than us and enlist more sets of hands to help you with this project (should you decide to do it), OR start working on it months in advance. We were on a time crunch and did not give ourselves enough time to do this project while maintaining our sanity.

The big question, was it worth it?

Yes! Obviously it would be nice to live in India, a crafting paradise, where we could commission the making of mini-tassels easily, the entire project itself, or find another creative alternative that wouldn’t break the bank. But if you enjoy working with your hands and have friends and family who would enjoy helping you, this is a really fun project to take on!

If any of you are brave enough to follow suit and have an opinion about this DIY, OR if you have easier ways up your sleeves of achieving the décor in the inspo photo (PLEASE TELL US THERE’S AN EASIER WAY), give us the 411 at [email protected].