why I don't sew

Some people may remember this post from almost a year ago talking about how I bought a lot of fabric to make curtains. Well - I decided it was time to really get started on it. Since my sister (Sherry) took a sewing class she is strides ahead of me when it comes to sewing so lucky for me she was here last weekend to help me get started. We cut out the pattern and after reading through the not-well-written directions a few times (this was not a sewing pattern for dummies like it said it was - if you were really a dummy about sewing like I am, the directions made no sense at all) we decided that I knew what I needed to do to make the valance. After that I was all on my own.

The first problems occurred when I needed to attach the contrasting band on the bottom to the actual valance. Here I ran into 2 problems, however only one is easy to explain. That is that the pattern for the band and the pattern for the valance didn't really match each other the way they were supposed to - in fact now that I line the patterns up together it is off by 1/4", but since the fabric is folded it causes a 1/2" problem. If I had taken the time to figure out then I could have just cut out a new band and fix it, but it wasn't until later that I realized it was a problem. By then I thought I could correct it while sewing - after all, isn't that what seam allowances are for? Well - if you can tell from the pics below, the problem just became exacerbated when I was sewing. Since I sew from right to left, the right side of the valance looks fine, but you can tell on the left side that the band on the bottom is super narrow. :(



I thought that everything else went fine until the last step. That was to fold the back over to create the casing for the curtain rod to go through. I guess I had made another mistake when I attached the lining for the back to the valance, but didn't notice it. But you can probably tell from the picture that at the top you can see something sticking out on the left side. Yep - that would be the part that I folded over to create the casing. I think if you just glance at it you wouldn't notice, but if you look at it for a few seconds (even if I hadn't told you) you would see it.

I am hoping that the actual curtains are easier to make than the valance - I really think they will be because it is all straight lines. Once I get the curtains made for the window right next to this one, I will see if I have enough fabric to make a new valance for this window.