DIY Curtains and Valances

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week was full of sewing ... just not quilts! Curtains were the theme of the week. It all started with a simple valance for the laundry room.

The cute little blue floral duck cloth was purchased at Hobby Lobby well over a year ago. From start to finish, it took about 30 minutes to make. After I finished it, I realized I had forgotten to add a lining. Oh well, it’s good enough! Sometimes you just have to call it done and move on.

The little valance put me in the mood to keep going. As you all know, my sewing room has been without curtains for a long time ...  about a year, actually. I purchased the fabric for the curtains two or three years ago at Hobby Lobby for $2 a yard. It was a great price, and I fell in love with the sweet little embroidered flowers.

Aww… look at them! Little daisies… my favorite flower.  I knew they would probably cause a little trouble when sewing, but it was a chance I was willing to take. After all, who can resist a fabric covered in little daisies?

 They didn’t cause a problem at all. The needle went right through them with no issues. BUT the fabric, on the other hand, was the biggest pain in my keister!

I tried every size needle in my stash, and not one of them would go through this crazy fabric without pushing the fabric down into the bobbin housing. After a few swear words, a time-out, and a completely useless search of the internet, I started brainstorming the problem.

Then, out of nowhere, I came up with a solution. My thought was that if I pulled the fabric from the back side of the walking foot and from the front, but in opposite directions, while helping it along, it might stop the fabric from being shoved down into the bobbin housing.

By golly gosh, it worked! It was a little awkward to do, but it got the job done. Sometimes you just have to outsmart the sewing machine! 

It took a little longer than expected, pretty much the whole day to make two sets of curtains for the windows and…

.…one set for the door. Yes, I have an exterior door in my sewing room. We think that at one time, this was a small one-car garage.

The next day I thought, why stop now? I was on a window treatment roll, so let’s make a new valance for the bedroom. I wanted something a little more “fancy.” How about a valance with a scalloped lower edge?  Oh, that would be cute!  I had to tape together some packing paper to make a long enough template. There was a little math involved to get the scallops evenly spaced, and I used an old quilting template to draw the wavy line.  Who knew all those quilting tools would come in handy for making curtains? 

This valance will be lined. I watched a few videos on how to add a lining, and they made it seem far more complicated than it needed to be.  I decided to keep it simple ... put the right sides together, sew around the outer edge, and leave an opening for turning. Sometimes the simplest way really is the best way.

Slowly, I made my way around the fabric. Sewing a 5/8" seam made me feel like I really knew what I was doing,  It’s been many years since I’ve used anything other than a quarter-inch or half-inch seam allowance.

That extra 1/8" had me feeling pretty fancy!

After turning it right side out and giving it a good pressing, I sewed around the edge to keep the seam secure through future washings.

A rod pocket was added to the back by making a simple tube of fabric. I drew a straight line on the backing, lined up the edge of the pressed tube with the line, pinned it in place, and sewed it down.

This was much easier than the complicated methods used by those professional curtain designers I found on YouTube. Sometimes I think they just enjoy making things harder than they need to be.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all of the fabrics in today’s post were prewashed and dried on high heat for maximum shrinkage. No future shrinking surprises for me!

She turned out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself.  Maybe next week while doing my weekly errands I'll stop by Hobby Lobby and check out the trims.  Perhaps a short fringe of little fuzzy balls for the scalloped edge?

  

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Quilt Top Finish - 169 Cake Stand Blocks

After a year of sporadically working on the Cake Stand quilt, it’s finally a quilt top! 

I’m pretty sure I deserve to do a little happy dance for this one. 

For all of my math loving readers here's the numbers.

The quilt top finishes at 91 x 91

Total piece count is a whopping 

6188

Yep, you read that right.  No wonder it took me a year to get this one together!

This week the plan is to piece the quilt backing from the yellow and teal floral yardage, make a label and attach it to the backing, and then make the binding.  Speaking of a label, I've not come up with a name for this quilt.  Any suggestions other than Cake Stand?

The rest of the week I'll be focusing on quilting the blue quilt on the frame.  I didn't make one stitch in her for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I can't wait to quilt up the cake stand quilt, so that's just the push I need to get ole blue quilted and off the frame.  I guess she’s been waiting patiently long enough.

It was a busy week in the sewing room by the end of each day I wasn't in the mood to work on the yo - yo's.  Only 17 to add the stash, that's better than none.

See you in a day or two for more about last week's sewing room adventures.

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Weekly Update

This week in Podunk is going to be busy, so todays update....short and to the point.

Half of the cake stand quilt is together, the upper half.

I tried to keep the same prints from touching but it happens.

Two things that made me smile last week.........

Thing one

Thing two.

Two things that didn't get much attention last week.

Thing one.

Thing two.

See you next week!

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Mini Quilt Blocks Playtime And WIP's

Every now and then I get a hankering for a little fabric playtime.  After a couple of weeks of arguing with myself I finally caved, dug through the scrap bins and made a couple mini blocks.  The first was this adorable scrappy mini Churn Dash block.  The inspiration was found on Pinterest and much to my surprise it had a link to a blog post tutorial.  I found an error/typo in the tutorial but could not report it because the blog has been abandoned.  So if you want to make this block the center square is cut at 2.5".  I used (4) 1" squares for the each side of the churn dash and the green polka dot is 1" x 2.5", the HST's in the corners are 1.5".

While digging through the scraps to make Churn Dash I decided to pull out enough scraps to make a 4" mini dresden using Suzn Quilts Mini Dresden template.  Dresden's are popular again, so I'm seeing them all over social media. It's my favorite block to make, they are so happy and cute no matter what size or color pallet a quilter chooses.

There’s no plan for either one of these blocks. I just needed a little scrappy playtime. Sometimes you just have to dig into the scraps and make something fun, with no plan and no pressure. 

Now it’s back to the design wall to get the Cake Stand quilt top together. All of the set-in triangle units are finished, so I should be able to get this girl into a quilt top in the next couple of weeks.

The first three rows in the upper-left corner have already been sewn together, and seeing those rows come together is so exciting! I’m finally getting close to having a finished quilt top. I can almost see the finish line!

I made a little progress on the yellow yo -yo's for the Yo - Yo coverlet.  34 completed and all the circles have the seem allowances pressed.  Someone asked recently if I'm using a Yo - Yo maker.  I am not.  I'm cutting the circles using a 5" longarm quilting ruler then using Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates to iron the seams under.  The running stitch around the circle is free hand stitching.

My plan to get this quilt off the frame was a total bust. I didn’t even touch the quilter all week. 

Maybe this week… maybe. 

 

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