16 Months in the Making

Remember a while ago when I discovered that I needed to either close my bathroom door or put up cafe curtains in my kitchen? Clearly, curtains were the option as I'm pretty sure there is no roommateless person on earth who closes her bathroom door when no one else is around.

It's not just me, is it?

Yeah, well I've been wanting to make a valance for the kitchen window that matches the cafe "curtains" (really two striped dishtowels) I put up in January.

Not January 2012. January 2011.

Indeed, I am a little bit behind.

I can't quite figure out how nearly a year and a half passed since I assigned myself this project. There was nothing tricky about this valance. I just got busy with life, I guess. And my cute stripe-y valance got backburnered. Big time.

Today, I finally, FINALLY, made the valance.

It was so easy, I'm embarrassed it took me as long as it did to finally get around to it.

Basically, here's how this went:

I took two dishtowels and cut them in half horizontally.

I joined three of these panels by overlapping their side hems and sewing double-stitched hems.

Joined panels on the floor next to the old non-matching Target-issue valance. I wanted a little more volume in the valance than I got from the old red one. Luckily, the width of three panels is a few inches longer. I love it when things work out.

Then I hemmed the tops of the joined panels by folding in the raw edge 1/4" and then folding over again to create a  1/2" hem to match the prehemmed bottom of the dishtowels.

The first fold, ironed.

Finally, I cut 2 1/2" strips of fabric from the remaining fourth panel, sewed them together lengthwise, pressed a hem, and sewed them on the back of the joined panels 1" down from the top hem to create a channel for the curtain rod.

You can see the two lines of stitching on the front of the panels that indicates the curtain rod channel. This is now ready to hang!

And voila! A matching valance! And after all that buildup, I think this project took me all of an hour and a half to do. It was really a snap and I love the possibilities for changing up the look in the kitchen. All in all, these 4 dishtowels cost me about $20 bucks plus a little sewing time for cute, custom cafe curtains and a valance. Not too shabby!

Yea! Finally! The drapes match...uh...the drapes.

Pin It