How to Turn Store Bought Curtains into Custom Curtains, Part I

I find that the most difficult part of making curtains is deciding on a fabric and then forking over huge sums of cash to pay for it. Our living room bay windows will need four panels and each panel will need over 2.5 yards. So a total of about 10.5 yards. And fabric is so expensive. I've been keeping my eye out for the past year for an amazing deal on something that I love. My husband is not a fan of solid linen curtains that are so popular these days.

(Sally Wheat's house via Cote de Texas)
We settled on a suzani print, but dang the fabric is kind of pricey (especially for a somewhat trendy choice). Side note: in our last house in the course of 8 years I made 4 pair of curtains for our living room. I like to change my mind.
So anyways, I wasn't feeling good about shelling out a bunch of money to make something that I might redo in 2 or 3 years. The last pair of curtains I made for the living room (which I still love and plan to hang in the dining room) I bought at Pier 1. Of course I ended up completely remaking them (removing all the hems and lining them). But it was nice to buy curtains, bring the home, hang them and decide what I liked. Here's a picture of when I was deciding between two prints.

And the finished product:

So back to the current house. I saw these curtains online and thought they were really cute (and fully lined) and at $34 a panel, I could buy all four and spend less than I would to buy fabric and lining. And of course save myself the trouble of making curtains (well sort of).

Oooh I hate rod pockets. I think that's the number one give away that something isn't custom. So I just planned to attach rings (not the clips, the curtains slip right off if whenever you move them). But (as many World Market reviewers had noted) the quality control wasn't so great at the factory in Pakistan and so the prints didn't match up. I opened up all my curtains on the floor of World Market to pick 4 that were as close to matching as possible. But still had to do some sewing.

Here are the panels opened up on the floor, to match up the yellow medallions and determine where to turn over the new top hem. Then I removed the stitching:

Pinned and ironed the new hemline. And then restitched by hand for a nice blind hem.

My next step will be to make some pleats. Maybe inverted or fan.

Now I have to figure out hardware. Stupid curtain rods are so expensive. I don't really want to spend over $20 per rod. I already ruled out Ikea's offerings and Home Depot. I think I'll look into metal rod next. Because another pet peeve of mine is the bump in extending rods that make it impossible for curtains rings to slide nicely when opening and closing them.