Audrey's Guest Bath Window

This is DD Audrey's guest bath. It is an oddly shaped room as the house sort of rambles at an angle but it is still pretty. You can see the custom window treatment the previous owner had installed about 2 years ago. It is falling apart with the returns winging out. It looks a little short here too but doesn't seem to IRL.  I took this home with me to help with making the new window treatment.

 Custom window treatments, particularly small valances, are often mounted on a board covered with muslin as you see here on the original WT. The edges are covered with bias and stapled to the board. That's right, you can't throw CWT in the wash usually, so to maintain them you want to dust with the vacuum brush maybe once a month to keep them clean. You can also have someone come in the home and steam clean them while they are hanging, something usually held out for big drapes and cornices. Back to our little guy here - The mounting boards are often attached to the wall with L brackets but in Audrey's home the moldings are different and heavier. They are wide enough to just sit the board on top of the window but I think I may attach it with some velcro or something. I couldn't believe when I just lifted the original WT and walked away with it.

Here's what Audrey has chosen. The colors you see in the sample dots are accurate. All other pics are not. It is more coppery and creamy which compliments the hammered copper look of the glass vessel sink. You can also see the beads which I think will work well with the sink also. Those dots of color are the inks used to print the fabric and are on almost all "real" home dec fabrics. Keep this strip to shop for other items, like towels.

My first step was measuring the board and figuring out what size pieces of fabric to cut. This is a simple flat valance with a center pleat and a pleat at each corner. This is where my notebook comes in really handy. You can see here my calculations. When I designed and sold CWTs, we would submit worksheets on this idea to the workroom to make the WT. The pleats made it necessary to use more than the width of fabric so an extra 5 inches was inserted/hidden  in the center pleat. You have to be real careful about the match when you use more than a width of fabric. With small pieces like this you can just put the first cut on top of the yardage to match up the second cut.
To sew the beads on it was necessary to tape them down and also use a "ski" type zipper foot. That foot let me swim right along compared to the new type zipper foot.

When the WT was complete I added the bias to the top edge and triple zigzagged it on the fold. The WT is complete other than mounting it to the board and that I will do tomorrow.

When I attached the lining to the top fabric I did it just like the Nancy Zieman collar, stitching just the bottom edge and understitching with the triple zigzag. That kept the beads from pulling out the lining. Then I just stitched up the sides like a pillow case. More tomorrow...Bunny