Sewing room to nursery: Valances and border prints

I don’t even have my valances hung yet, but I just couldn’t wait to share them.

I’m usually not a fan of border prints. They’re hard to use in quilts. You need to miter the corners for them to look kind of OK, and they never quite match up.

But I do love the way the border print looks on this tab top valance I made for the nursery. I love all the different dogs and all the horizontal lines compliment the all-over dog print above it well. I’m going to use this layout again when I make the crib skirt.

To make the valance front I ordered three yards of each of these fabrics. Yes, that seems like a lot, but if you’ve never made window treatments before, a good rule of thumb is to make the window treatment twice as wide as a the window. The larger window in the nursery is 45 inches wide, which means 90 inches of continuous fabric.

I fussy cut out the border measuring against the printed lines on the border print instead of using the ruler to measure an exact width. Then I measured the average height of the border print and cut the all-over dog print to size so that the body of the valance would measure 12 inches tall once you eliminated the seam allowances.

I’m going to write up a tutorial on this complete with photos later, but I’m writing it the instructions for a single piece of fabric in the front, so Pin this blog if you want to remember how to piece the front.

Normally window treatments have a one inch seam allowance and I don’t think valances are lined. But to conserve fabric I used a quarter-inch seam allowance both for piecing the front of the valance and for attaching drapery lining. That means instead of hemming, I just had to flip and turn, which is much easier. Plus I think it looks more professional.

I love the results and now that my husband is finished painting the room, I can’t wait to hang them in the nursery.

Here’s the sewing room to nursery task list, so you can follow along with my progress with just over 13 weeks to go.

Make puppy crib quilt
Sew valances
Sew crib skirt
Make bobby covers to match the nursery decor
Make fabric baskets for the cube shelf I ordered that will double as toy box/book shelf
Paint the nursery
Get new carpet
Finish flipping my husband’s childhood dresser to match the nursery decor
Recover the rocking chair cushion
Set up the nursery