Update:
Vicki loves her new curtains. The valances – which I thought were going to be too long – were just right and could have possibly been a bit longer even. Here are some shots of her dining room windows:
This shows the valance a bit closer:
Here is her bedroom curtain tied back:
The final products turned out better than I thought they would and Vicki was very pleased with all of them. The bedroom curtain definitely blocked the light and helped her to sleep better.
Original Post
I’ve been working on a valance for Vicki’s dining room windows. In my motif book, there is a flower line which is quite fun. This fits Vicki and she marked it with one of her little tabs (this is what she does to all my crochet books in the hopes I’ll make her all the things she marks).
I finally finished the valances for her two windows in her dining room. I made 62 flowers of 4 different designs. These were quick little flowers which took very little time to make but they are quite fun. The one on the left (peach petal with white smaller petals and orange center) is an adaptation from the patterns because I wasn’t thrilled with how the third style (yellow/green petals peach center) worked up and looked. I ended up doing two of this style and they are the center flower for each of the valances.
In the book the flowers are put together with fishing line so they look like they are floating. I joined mine together with green chain so it looks like a vine. I could have just done a simple chain but that seemed a bit boring. Instead I played with a leaf pattern. I was going to try to make a triangle type leaf but the few things I tried I didn’t like. As I was playing with the design I realized it would be easy to use the Crocodile Stitch for leaves. In the picture below you can see where I did just chaining and then a different spot where I put four crocodile stitches in a row. These four were worked directly above each other.
I also played with the spacing of the chains – from number of chains to number of leaves as the pictures show.
When I did the crocodile stitch I discovered an interesting occurrence when I worked the stitches from the last stitch in the crocodile stitch instead of slip stitching into the center to make them straight above each other (see above). When I worked the next crocodile stitch from the last stitch it created a coiling affect which I liked – see the picture below.
So Vicki would have two unique valances – I started the vine with a crocodile stitch for one and two crocodile stitches for the other one.
In general I would chain a certain number of times (generally 5 or 10) before I added another feature sometimes a flower, sometimes a leaf or four. As you can see from the picture below, I would sometimes put the flowers very close together.
I got the flowers to hang differently from the vine by varying how I attached the flowers. In the picture below the left hand flower (white petals) is attached with a slip stitch at the bottom and top of a petal. The right hand flower (pink petals) is joined by slip stitching on either side of the center flower. The white flower hangs differently which adds variety just like you would see in nature.
This last picture shows a variety of flowers and leaf sequences. Vicki will be tacking them to her wall around the upper part of her window (unless she decides to use a curtain rod to twine them around). These will hang down in whatever arrangement she puts them. My only concern is that Sasha may think this is a toy for her to bat at and play with but that isn’t going to be my problem.
This is just the valance and the curtains are going to be a café type curtain with dots all over it in the same colors. It should look good when we are done. I’ll try to take a couple of pictures and post them later.
