Reduce - Reuse - Recycle

We don't always associate that phrase with custom window treatments.  But with a little ingenuity and teamwork, look what can be done...

  

Interior designer Janis Reed included a valance with stationary panels in her vignette at the 2011 Rochester Home & Garden Show.  Janis packed a lot of punch in her 12' x 12' space!

  

When Janis moved the furniture to a model home after the show, she wanted to reuse the stationary panels in the family room and the valance in the powder room.

 
The biggest issue to address in re-purposing the window treatments was that the vignette had an 8 foot wall and the model home had 9 foot ceilings.  Both the panels and the valance were too short and out of proportion in the larger space.  

 
To address this issue with the valance, a padded cornice was added to the top of the valance.  I had just enough fabric left over to allow a perfect pattern match.  The new window treatment looks even better with the added design element!   

When drapery panels are too long, it’s an easy solution --just re-hem. With a little creativity there are also solutions when panels are too short.

Janis' panels needed an extra 16” of length.  Because the window treatments were not the focal point in the new setting, she wanted to use the same fabric to lengthen the panels. We added three horizontal tucks to the bottom section of the panel and hid the seam inside one of the tucks. The tucks added interest and detail to the panels but kept them in their role of supporting player in the overall design scheme.