SWAGS & JABOTS

When we first bought our house back in 1996, I made some cheap valances for the living room and dining room.  

Now it's 2011 and I finally decided to make some changes in the valances.  The old ones had started out a deep burgundy, but as time has passed, the window side of them had turned almost pink due to sun exposure.  Here is a picture from Thanksgiving, 2003 with the old valances.

This is a picture of the girls with their Grannie.  As you can see there is nothing fancy here on the window.

I found a picture while I was surfing the web that I really liked (see right).  I like the shutters too, but not for the living room.  I looked all over the internet for directions to make swags and jabots.  I found little bits of instructions, here and there, but not one set of instructions to use for the whole thing.  With the help of my handyman husband, we got the patterns made, figured out how much material I would need, and he purchased the mounting boards.  I lucked out and found a new bolt of fabric at Hancocks that had plenty of yardage for our project and the price was great - only $6.00 a yard.  The cashier even gave me her 20% discount so that helped out even more. 

I made a muslin pattern to use as my practice swag.  Let me say, this was more than a little challenging for me!  When I finally felt like we might be able to pull it off, we went to work. 

We set up both of our 6' long tables, side by side, in the living room.  This turned out to be a great work space.  We had cut out the pattern while sitting on the floor and I'm getting much too old for that.  (It wasn't even easy when I was younger.)  We spent most of today working and although everything is cut out and sewn, we've only gotten one swag and the jabots on the boards. I could not have done it without all the help from my handyman!

But I've got to tell you,  I love it!!  It turned out as well as I wanted.  Isn't it gorgeous? 

Now if we can just get the double one to come out looking as good as this.

.

Here is a picture of just the jabots on the double window.

I'm not sure when we'll get back to it as tomorrow we're heading south to celebrate Nate's 2nd birthday!