Living Room/Dining Room Valences

In July, I posted a blog about a valence mock-up made out of muslin.  That mock-up was about 45" wide.  The first windows my client decided to tackle with this valence were 82" wide!  So -- do we add more swags and chevrons or do we make the same design, only larger?  

The answer was clear when I saw the dimensions we needed.  The valence was to be attached at about 107" from the floor, several inches above the window.  And the valence needed to come down long enough that the top of the window was not visible, even more length needed because the viewer would be so far below the valence.  We ended up with 37" length on the ends and 23" for the swags.  This actually fits a guideline I have seen - a valence should be about 1/3 the length of the window.  To add swags the size of the mock-up, but with the new length needed, would make the valence look stretched from top to bottom and would have taken much more fabric.  We went with enlarging the original design.

The scale settled, I made new patterns of the size needed.  There are three types of pieces:  The center chevron, the cascade for the ends, and the swag.  All pieces are made with four layers in this case:  The main fabric on the front, lining (with an accent band) on the back, and interlining and blackout lining in the inside.  The interlining gives the valence a luxurious feel and the blackout lining keeps light from coming through and interfering with the look of the folds and creases.

On the left is the back of the center chevron.  The lower edge is a band made of the accent fabric (a beige satin).  When the chevron is folded, the accent fabric will show on the front side as seen in the next picture.  To create the band, I simply cut off the bottom of the lining and sewed on strips of the accent fabric.  The cascades on the sides and the swags also have a border of accent fabric on the lower edge of the back.  

  

This is the cascade.  The picture on the far left shows using a ruler to ensure the accent piping is applied in a straight line.  I used lots of pins to keep the bias-cut fabric from stretching and slipping.  (I also used a ruler and lots of pins on the chevron since its edges are cut on the bias.)  You can see in the picture with the folded cascade how the accent band on the back shows through the front at each fold.


The piping for all the pieces is made using sausage bead weighted cording.  The piping is made from accent fabric, with a narrow layer of interlining between it and the sausage bead weights to cover the bead "bumps".  This type of piping gives the pieces extra weight so they hang well.


The swag pieces were very large - with too much width to cut on the bias as would have been done if possible.  Swags cut on the bias hang a little better than swags cut on the grain.  But even if we had gone with narrower swags, the width needed would have prevented cutting on the bias.  It took a little work, but the grain-cut swag had a nice form in the finished valence.

Each valence will have a cascade on each end, a chevron in the middle, and two swags, all hung from a 1" x 4" board.  To prepare the board, I took a piece of lining fabric and stapled it so it covered all the wood.  I used a wide enough piece of lining so that there was enough left to cover the stapled valence pieces at the end.


The next step was to staple on the chevron in the center, then the cascades on each side.  To prepare those pieces, I folded them on my work surface, pinned the top edges, and ironed very well, pinching the weighted piping at the folds.  As I stapled them to the wood, I was able to make any adjustments needed so they hung nicely.  The stapling itself was very easy since I use an upholstery staple gun powered by an air compressor.  The only way to go, in my opinion.

Getting the swags on the wood was challenging as it involved working with the folds to make them hang just right.  I adjusted some of the folds, which required cutting the top edge.  The finished product, then, was not the same as the original cut pattern!

 

 Here I have finished attaching the pieces to the wood and have brought over the flap of lining, folding it at the edges and stapling all around.

One last bit of preparation was to tack the folds in the chevron and cascades so they hung flat, but in a natural way.  As you may be able to tell, I had the board clamped to my work surface, and fortunately had enough height for the pieces to hang without touching the floor.

Here are the installed valences.  To hang them, I attached 3 angle brackets to the wall at the desired height, then laid the valence on top.  With someone holding one end in place, I was able to screw the angle brackets to the bottom of the wood (using a cordless drill with a screwdriver bit attached of course!).


 
One final detail - to keep the edges of the cascades close to the wall, to keep sunlight from shining through, I pulled the bottom of the cascade tight and nailed a tiny brad through the piping into the wall.





I have to tell you about my perfect drill - the Bosch PS10-2A 12V Max I-Driver.  It's cordless, not too heavy, slim and sleek, has plenty of power, and has good balance.  But best of all, I can rotate the head to different angles, including straight up!  This was great when screwing the brackets to the wood on these valences.

I gave my previous one like this to my daughter, and right away went to buy a new one.  But the stores I searched do not carry it!  I bought it online.

Bedroom Drapes with Embroidered Blue Flowers

 

Now it's time for the drapes that go over those sheers!  The fabric is a gorgeous blue flower embroidered linen-like fabric.  There are four windows, so eight panels.  Finished length 109".  Each panel will be one fabric width wide.

Here is an overview of the fabric pattern.

 The first task is to turn up the double 6" hem and hand stitch it in place.  What made this project a little more trouble is I decided the lining should back all of the visible fabric.  Otherwise, the embroidered design could show through to the front, and we can't have that!  That means the lining tucks all the way inside the side hems - all the way to the fold - and needs to be in front of the bottom hem folds.  Since I am leaving the lining hem loose at the bottom (to prevent any stretches and pulls), I had to cut a piece of lining and tuck it inside the hem before I sewed it shut.  That is what the picture to the left shows.

 The side seams were going to present a problem because (1) the lining needs to go all the way to the fold, so I can't just match up selvages, (2) the lining has to fit inside the panel -perfectly-, without any tugs or ripples.  The method I used is a lot of trouble, but results in a beautiful lining insertion.  First, I laid my fabric face down on the table and turned in 3" and pressed.  Then tucked 1" under and pressed.  I did this on both sides.  Then I laid the lining down face up and tucked the edges down the side seams all the way in and all the way down.  (The lining was cut so it was exactly the width to fit fold-to-fold.)  I needed a way to pin the fabric and lining so that I could take the panel to the machine and stitch the lining to the main fabric at the inside (1") fold.  As the picture on the left shows (with the main fabric to the left), I put straight pins in the -lining only- about every six inches down the side, where the straight pins are exactly along the fold, but not going through it.  Then I placed a straight pin in the main fabric positioned so it crosses the vertical straight pin where it goes into the lining.

Then (and this is the worst part), I lift up the lining and place it -under- the main fabric, opening up the main fabric outside fold as shown, lining the straight pins on the lining with the inside (1") fold and matching the straight pin on the main fabric to the point the vertical pin enters the lining.  That is shown in the bottom set of pins in the picture.  Then I pull out the vertical pin and use it to attach the main fabric to the lining (center set of pins), then pull out the pin from the main fabric and use it to also attach the fabric to the lining (at the top of the picture).  I made this picture a little bigger so you could see.








Then I open up the seam fold and stitch on the fold line.








Now the lining is in, I tuck under the bottom corners at an angle and hand stitch in place.  I have not talked about the lining, but it is hemmed with a 2" double hem, just a little shorter than the finished panel length.

 For the header:  I measure the true top of the panel and mark with a pin along the width of the fabric.  Then iron on the buckram above the pins, aligning the bottom edge of the buckram with the pins.  With the buckram now on, I tuck under one inch and press, then fold the buckram over as shown on the left and hand-stitch the bottom edge of the header to the lining.

Here are the eight panels ready to pleat.  Notice that the pattern of the panels on the left do not line up perfectly as the five on the right do.  They start out the same on the other end, then gradually get out of line.  This must be a result of the embroidery process, which is done on top of the woven base fabric. I take this into account when matching panels to windows.

 These pictures illustrate marking and stitching the pleats.  On the right are stitched pleat folds.

   

 As I pinched the pleats I experimented with tacking, and decide they look cleaner when I enter the pleat from behind, make stitches back and forth, then exit to the back and fasten off.

 Here are the standard drapery pins we will use to attach the drapes to rings.  This thick embroidered fabric, together with the buckram and lining, is very stiff and difficult to pin!  It helped to use needle-nose pliers to hold the pins.








The finished drapes are shown below - finished except for being "trained" to hang correctly.  After installing them, we arranged the drapes and loosely tied them together with scrap strips of cloth.  After several days, the strips were removed but I wasn't on hand to take additional pictures!   Note:  I used screw eyes  to attach the ends of the drapes to the wall to provide a finished outside edge.

Isn't this fabric beautiful in this room?

Bedroom Sheers

This project is to make sheers and drapes for 4 bedroom windows.  In this post, I describe the sheers project.  The sheers are for tall windows in a room with a 10' ceiling.  We decided on a length of 109".  The sheers will be stationary (non-moving), with one width of fabric evenly pinch-pleated across the width of the window. 

    

 The materials included 14 yards of sheer voile fabric, about 13 yards of sheer header tape, and thread.





After measuring and measuring again, I tore the fabric for each panel about a half-inch above the desired cut and then cut a clean edge with my rotary cutter.  Before doing anything else, I also cut off the selvages to prevent that slight bit of puckering you get with sheer voile.

 The hem was to be a double 6" hem.  Voile is famously slippery and hard to work with.  To help make the hem accurate, I placed some masking tape at the 6" mark and used it as a guide to turn up the hem twice, pin and iron in place.

To secure the hem, I stitched along the top edge  very close to the fold.  It needed to be pressed one more time, stretching and holding the stitching area each time until it was cool.  I think of voile kind of like hair - after heating (with the iron) you need to hold it in place until it cools so it will retain its shape.

Below - pinning the hem, the stitched hem being pressed.

 

To attach the header, I sewed the edge of the header to the wrong side of the voile, one half inch below the top of the panel, as shown below.  Then folded the header over twice and pinned it to the panel, pressed, stitched, and pressed again.

 

 The side hems were a double 1.5" fold, pinned, stitched, and pressed.

  
 
The pleats were done in the usual way, marked, folded and stitched, then pinched and tacked at the bottom.  I felt I needed an extra tack at the top (see above) to keep the pleats from popping out.

 Here are the finished, installed sheers, hanging on sheer rods with standard drapery pins.  They are hanging with drapes that had just been installed but not yet trained!  My next blog post describes the drapes.

Pinch-pleated Valence for Breakfast Nook

Wow, I have really gotten behind on my posts!  All I can say is, you  have to make hay while the sun shines, and the sun has been shining, as you will see as I catch up my blog!

Here is a project for a pinch-pleat valence in a breakfast nook with 3 angled windows.  We decided to hang the valence fairly high and make the finished length 21".

 

The cut length of the valence is 21" + 3"*2 for hem + 4"+1" for header = 32".  The pattern is Bosporus.  After determining where I wanted the pattern to fall on the finished valence, I pulled a thread to mark the top and bottom cuts.

    

The finished with of the valence is 152", so before pleating and including the seams for the multiple widths, I needed 292" of width.  This took about 6 widths of fabric!  The repeat on this fabric is 24", so as I cut each of the widths starting in the exact same place in the pattern there was about 16" of waste between each one.  Nothing to be done about that.

Next step is to sew all the main fabric widths together and repeat the cutting and sewing widths together with the lining (below).

I chose to sew the side hems next, bringing the main fabric in 2" on the edges.  I sewed each side hem by matching the raw edges of the lining and main fabric, right sides together, and sewing a 0.5" seam allowance. Once the side seams were completed, I stretched out the fabric and lining to press the sides in so that the lining was completely flat against the fabric from end to end.  Now I turned up a double 3" hem, pinned, and hand-stitched all the way across.  Did this take time with about 12' of hem?  Yes!  Looking back, I think I could have saved some work by machine stitching the top of the hem to the lining (without showing on the front), then hand-stitching the sides, which were so short.

After the hem, I placed the bottom of the iron-on buckram exactly 21" above the bottom of the hem and ironed it in place.  Then turned down the 1" tuck allowance, then turned all that over again and pressed to result in a 21" total length.  I stitched along the bottom of the header edge to give it a neat appearance from the back.

I also at this time hand-stitched the folded edges and bottom corners so everything would lie flat.




Now for the pleats!  There will be 30.  The first step is to mark the gaps and pleat widths all along the header and check to be sure there is the correct amount of gap on each end (4").  I made a marking pattern on a piece of paper and used it to place pins at each pleat and gap.  For each pleat, I folded the valence wrong sides together, matching the beginning and ending pleat pins, and sewed down 4" through the fabric, lining, and buckram.  The picture at the right shows the panel with pleat spaces sewed and pressed.

  

To make the pinch pleats, I went through the stack and pinched each pleat into 3 folds, securing the lower edge.  On the right is the finished valence, with the fabric design falling just as I planned.

 

The valence was installed using simple pleat hooks hung over three sheer rods butted up against each other to make a continuous valence.  They look nice, I think!