Simple Sewing

My sister emailed me one day and said "Beeeee????? There's a chance I volunteered you to make a curtain valance for one of my co-workers. OK?"  Yes, indeed. I enjoy sewing simple curtains. All that was needed was a very simple valance, and she was going to buy the fabric herself.  She even gave me the old valance to use as a guide. I just had to cut and sew some straight lines. She had looked for something in the stores but couldn't find anything she liked, but she found fabric that she loved. Score one for DIY.

I've never sewn with ticking before but every time I hear the word it makes me think of Little House on the Prairie  and how they would empty the straw ticks during spring cleaning and fill them with fresh grass and straw. I always thought it was just a specifically striped kind of cotton, but it's not. It doesn't really feel like cotton, it's much slipperier and a little bit more ravelly. It might not even be cotton--I honestly have no idea.

I did some of my best sewing on this rectangle. To get the stripes to run vertically I had to sew a seam in the middle as the fabric wasn't wide enough. A French seam is a little too bulky (as I learned with my sister's cherry curtains) so I used a flat fell seam. You can't even tell it's there. It took a teensy little bit more work but it's so flat and smooth. I was silly excited because it was the first one I had ever done. Stripes make things quite easy to line up just right. The hems all cooperated and didn't squiggle out of place or anything--they stayed put just where I said to. It made for a quite relaxing evening of sewing.

My sissie's co-worker was quite pleased with them and said she'd remember me for future tasks. She wrote me a nice little note, thanking me for making her exactly what she wanted. She even sent pictures of it all hung up (it's always fun to see something you've made out in the world somewhere).

It's such a very simple bit of sewing but sometimes that's my favorite kind. I usually tend towards riotous stacks of color and forget the calm feeling one can achieve from working with plain and simple things. And just to point something out--you can just barely see the seam :)