Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Weekly Project 4/3-4/9: DIY Nursery Valances

I love recycling in the home. I can usually spruce up a room or change the way something looks without it costing a fortune and without throwing away perfectly good items!

This week's project is a simple set of Nursery Valences. Our nursery has 2 very large windows. I need 2 valances to cover the 2 separate 76 inch wide window spans. Sounds like a lot huh?

A girlfriend and I swap items occasionally. It's our way of clearing out things we no longer want or need without throwing it out. In this case, she had a random single panel navy curtain that I was definitely able to use. I forgot to snap a photo of it before tearing into it, but here's what it looked like in the beginning: 


To start, I took my seamripper to the curtain, quickly demolishing all the seams and removing the tabs from the top. After running it through the wash and ironing the kinks out, I had a full 76" x 57" piece of fabric to work with. Using my own pattern below, I cut the fabric into 4 pieces. 

 
I seamed together pieces 1&3 and 2&4, length-wise. I don't have a serger, so I had to roll the seams and stitch them down to get a good finish that wouldn't fray. I then rolled, ironed and seamed 1 long outer seam and the 2 short outer seams. This left the top seam which needed to accommodate the curtain rod. I double-rolled a 5/8" seam, then folded the edge over 2.5" to create a clean pocket. 

This left me with a 14" valance at just over 111" long. Which leaves me with a perfect mild gather when spanned over 76" windows! 


The fabric and thread cost me nothing, the simple (and cheap - may I emphasize simple again, I wasn't going for très chic) metal curtain rods from the local dollar store cost $3.50 apiece. So for a whopping 7 dollars, I was able to add the perfect window treatment to our nursery!

1 comment:

Tiffany said...

Great job on the curtains!! I love reusing things I already have or that is given to me.