Shower curtain turned valances

I was out shopping for fabric to make some drapes for our dining room. I found some gorgeous silk fabric that I fell in love with. But there was one major hiccup, it cost $99/yd. ! Yikes! I have that kind of taste, unfortunately. I can walk into any store and my eye is drawn to the most expensive items. Now that would be fine but I have champagne taste and only a beer drinking wallet, as they say. So if I really want something bad enough I will either save up for it, wait for it to go on sale or improvise. In this case I would have needed 5 yds of fabric per window. I have 2 windows. Can you say OUCH???

So me being me, I decided to shop at one of my favorite discount stores (TJ Maxx) and stumbled upon this beautiful shower curtain ($14). It is fabric with gold embroidered swirls. I then went to the fabric store and had a 50% off coupon for one cutting and bought the gold tassle trim for another $27.00 and the thread to sew it with. So for about $44., I got a nice set of valances that look decent. I wanted floor length drapes but there was only one shower curtain, so I cut it in half, horizontally and folded over the top to create a rod pocket. I then added the trim to the bottom with a straight stitch and then to create the gathers I simply spaced out (3) 24" segmants and gathered them up about 12" and added a few stitches to hold them. Voila! A shower curtain turned valances.