Make a Valance (From a Pillow Sham)

About a year ago out of desperation, I bought a duvet cover for my bed.  Why the desperation?  The other one had been destroyed by my dogs.  While I knew that I wanted something cheap, I also knew that it needed to be a style that I could live with for a year or two until there was more money coming in for me to make the bedroom of my dreams. 

What I ended up getting was a duvet cover (with pillow shams) from Wal-Mart for only $25.  I didn't necessarily like the color of pillow shams it came with (they were a coordinating color to match the duvet, but not the same pattern), so I purchased the actual matching pattern for only $10.  So on my hands, I had two extra pillow shams.  I knew the chance of me finding material in the same shades as the duvet was impossible, so I figured why not make a valance from the extra shams??

What You Need:

• Pillow Sham or two, depending upon your width of your window (mine are 3.5 feet wide, so I used two shams)
• matching thread
• ruler
• iron
• pins
• sewing machine, fabric glue, velcro
• curtain rod

1.  Fold over 1 inch of the lenth of the pillow sham (so the wrong sides of the fabric are folded together).  Measure to ensure that it's evenly folded.  You can adjust the width you fold over based on your curtain rod-just make your curtain rod can go through.
2.  Press.  Pin.
3.  Using a sewing machine, sew along the bottom of the fold, back stitching at both the start and end to ensure threads stay.  Clip any extra threads. 
4.  Repeat if necessary for other shams.
5.  Hang on curtain rod.

Ta Da!  Easy eh?  And I think it doesn't look too shabby while I'm waiting for the material of my dreams!