Serendipity

If you want a job you can report to every morning, work a specified number of hours at a pre-determined activity that you are capable of doing but will not have to think much about, you will not be creating window treatments for a living.

Every minute of every working day, window treatment fabricators are thinking their way through one-of-a-kind projects.  Even when we make a style over and over again, the materials and math for a particular project makes that job unique.

If you love the unexpected twist, the happy coincidence, the lucky break; if the occasional surprising perfect marriage of the specific numbers with the specific fabric quickens your pulse; if your heart goes pitter-patter every time a raw material is transformed before your eye; if the mathematics of your project are as beautiful to you as the end product is to everyone else- then you will be rewarded every day in this line of work.

Which leads me to this valance that has been meandering through this post.

The cut length of the sections is 23", and the pattern repeat is 23.25"- right there you know you're on to something!  The horizontal repeat is offset so that when the scallops are cut to size, what is left is the perfect part of the pattern to allow the repeat to flow continuously across the scallop and the horn on its right.

This kind of fortuitous coincidence is to window treatment fabrication what a lunar eclipse is to astronomy.
Usually it is the alternate motif that is used for the horn.  

Some numbers, some fabric, a few snips and a few stitches, and- another Sheffield valance is born.  The fabric is a beautiful English print on a cotton-linen blend.

I'd like to see this one mounted on its board, but, we were asked to put it on a tacking strip instead.   It will be installed on-site.