When I stayed at my mom’s the other week for a childhood friend’s wedding that was out in the suburbs, I wanted to surprise my mom by finally making the bedroom valence she had been wanting. We had picked out the fabric ages ago, and I just need to dedicate a couple of hours to sewing it up.

At this point, I’ve made three valences in her house already. You could say I’m working my way around the house. Because of the wedding festivities taking place throughout the weekend, I reserved Sunday morning, before heading back into the city, to whip this out. Sunday morning I got all set to make the valence. I had cut the fabric, started some initial ironing, pinned the first hem. I passed the first hem through the machine and went to pass the second and my machine stopped working. What?!?! Why are you not working, I yelled at it. It just stopped running, and didn’t start running even after 30 minutes. I thought maybe the motor overheated, which is why I waited, but the longer I waited, the more impatient I got to get home and do all of the other chores I would need to accomplish before the start of the week. So I went home.

A day or so later, I checked my sewing machine, and sure enough, it was working fine. So over the next few days I worked on getting the valence finished so I could get it hung before my mom returned from a weeklong vacation. Friday morning, I woke pretty early and actually finished. I packed it up and headed to my mom’s after work. It was hung with plenty of time and my mom was surprised, and appreciative.

Now, you want to make your own, right? Making a valence really isn’t that difficult. I figured it out, using a store-bought example, and it took no time.

You will need fabric three times the length of the window you want to frame. If you use one kind of fabric, just buy the right amount of yardage lengthwise and you’ll be set to go. You’ll want to sew a hem on the short ends. A variation of this is fold and iron a hem and leave it unsewn for a nicer edge on both sides. It really doesn’t matter which you choose to do, since most valences wrap around the sides and that edge often goes unnoticed, or unseen.

The width of a yard of fabric makes a nice length (from top to bottom) for most windows, so you typically don’t need to make a lot of cuts, although you can do so if you choose. Next you want to hem the fabric lengthwise; be sure to fold the right sides into one another when making this pass, so your side edge hems will be on the inside once you turn in right side out.

Once you’ve done that, you turn the piece inside out. This is a good time to do a final ironing of the piece to set the right creases, and make sure the fabric is smooth. Now you’ll need to mark up the fabric to sew room for the curtain rod to slip through. Measure the one you have, but a lot of them come in 1- or 3-inch widths. For my mom’s, the bar was 3 inches, so I created a very roomy 3 inches for the bar. I give the top of the valence (before the top of the bar) about 3 inches in this case. This makes marking the fabric pretty easy to make these passes because it’s about 3 and 6 inches. Mark the back of the fabric with a sewing pencil in a color that stands out enough for you to see it. I typically run the machine on the outside edges of my markings just to make sure that the fabric doesn’t pinch the bar. Once you’ve ironed and marked, pass the fabric through the sewing machine along the lines.

Two-fabric varation

Now let’s say you want to use two kinds of fabric—let’s say the facing fabric is really nice and a bit more costly, or it’s sheer and you need to back it with a solid fabric. In this case you’ll be making two panels if you were going to make a valence for a window like my mom’s. In this case, you buy one and a half the length of the window in each fabric. Then you cut the yard in half (widthwise, not lengthwise) and you make two panels facing one with the nicer fabric, and one with the liner fabric.

For the most part, you’ll be doing the same thing as the one-fabric method, sewing the ends and making the bar pocket. However, one thing I found when doing this method is that I didn’t want to see the seam of the fabrics meeting from below (where most people will view the valence from the vantage point of the floor). To get rid of this, I typically wrap the nicer fabric over the edge to the back a few inches so that you see a nice crease in that fabric from the bottom. Then I trim the excess from the backing fabric (basically the few inches that the nicer fabric took up in the back) so the top edges line up, making pinning easier. When you’re all said and done, you turn the valence inside out to iron a nice firm crease at the bottom. A passersby would never know that there’s a hem in the back, and you’ve created a really professional looking window treatment.

Now you’re ready to hang the valence and step back in awe of your amazing craftiness.

I had a moment of genius craftiness tonight. I had bought this little bud vase from Crate & Barrel, unsure of what I was going to do with it exactly. I didn’t really need another vase; I was more looking for some kind of chotchke or decoration. Then it hit me: Fill the vase with itty bitty balls of sock yarn for a colorful, yet simple display. I have wanted to integrate my knitting obsession into my home decor before and this was the perfect solution. The stash afghan project lent itself well to contributing to this side project. I was able to find a home for the scraps that were too short for a row on the blanket.

The yarn ball vase will find a home on my coffee table next to my leaf candle holder and my hideaway box for matches.

My mom was jealous of the wreath I made in 2007 out of pine cones from the tree in the front yard, and requested that I make her one too. So she collected all the cones before the snow hit and as a Christmas bonding activity, we put it together. I say we, but my mom was really there for moral support. We laid out the pine cones and I really like the look of the layered cones. I then had to attach each cone to the metal ring frame. This took forever and resulted in sap covered hands. We then added these berries to give it a punch of color. I really like how it came out. Oh, and just a tip: If you have sap covered hands, use canola oil. It will break through the sap right away. Don’t try to scrub your hands to death because it just won’t work.

I updated my bulletin board by backing it with foamboard. The cardboard I originally used wasn’t thick enough to stabilize the bulletin board. So I backed it with this foamboard I had and cut it to fit.

Take a look at it all dolled up with accessories.

And here’s the new and improved coffee table:

Check out these Ravelry logo earrings I was able to make. I saw someone had done this already so I figured I could do it too. Voila!

I whipped up a baby bib for a mommy-to-be at work. Isn’t it cute? ZOOOOOOM!!

Ethan also really enjoyed modeling the bib, since I don’t have a baby to try it on. I got a whole pack of these bibs from Babies R Us and I love them. It worked so great for embroidery because it has a double layer. So if you’re careful, you can work the “bad side” yarn in between the layers so you can hide it. I only messed up once.

I then inserted some roses I bought in bushels. I filled the whole wreath with them, placing them sporadically and winding the “stems” around the base of the wreath.

Perfecto! Here it is hanging on my door. Since my door is black, I think the green and red give a bit of life, don’t you?

Also I knitted up the second oMop Cozy and a Catnip Mouse Toy for Ethan. Busy busy bee.

I make earrings, have I told you that? Well I do. I end up liking most of what I make and feeling compelled to hold on to the pair using the argument that maybe eventually I’ll have the perfect outfit to match. Of course, eventually I’ll have the outfit to match. I’ll probably go out and buy it to justify why I’m keeping the earrings in the first place. OK, well maybe it doesn’t go that far, but it’s some what ridiculous.

Anywho, I haven’t made earrings in awhile; mainly because I really don’t need more and I have extras that I should give away or sell. I tried Etsy for awhile, but no bites so I became discouraged. I had an earring party once and made quite a little bundle but you can only take advantage of your work colleagues so many times. (By the way, it’s been so long since I did anything with Etsy that now all my stock has been removed. Plus I desperately need help taking pictures of my product. I just can’t get the lighting right.)

Actually, at my last job almost all the women had purchased a pair. It was really neat to walk around the office and notice my earrings dangling from someone else’s lobes. At my new job, I haven’t given quite as many away. I gave a pair to my managing editor. She wears that quite a bit and mentioned it the last time so I would notice how she was wearing them. I thought that was pretty sweet, but I’m more excited that I picked a pair she is able to use with more than one outfit.

I have a “company” I started for crafty business. It’s called Kitsch by K. Here’s the logo I made:

I haven’t done anything with it in years but I always dream of getting back into doing something with it.

Oh yeah, and I read somewhere about using bamboo place mats as hangers for earrings. Let me tell you, boy does it work!