When we first moved into our apartment, I made curtains for every room. Our Guest Room/Random Everything Room was painted light yellow (the same color as the Back Bedroom in our current house). My two favorite colors are yellow and blue, and I chose a cute yellow, blue, and white striped material for the curtains. The valance I made out of a solid blue fabric.
When it came time to make the Back Bedroom into B's Bedroom, I decided to save a little money and re-use the striped curtains. I hate to waste things, and those curtains were only used for the 2 years we lived in that apartment. Since then, they'd been sitting in a box (yes, we still have unpacked boxes).
I wanted to change things up for the new curtains, so they weren't exactly the same. Plus, in our apartment, the windows were two very large windows side by side, whereas B's Room has two smaller, separate windows. After a lot of Pinterest-ing and drawing on graph paper, I finally decided on a valance with two straight hanging curtains on the sides. Rather than having a solid blue valance, I decided to make the valance and the curtains both out of the striped material, with stripes of the solid blue. I used up every single last piece of the old curtains!
It took me 3 days to take apart the old curtains, but it was totally worth it! Plus, I didn't have to buy anything new! I even reused curtain rods from another room!
I love love love how the came out! It makes the room feel so much more homely. And B, of course, loves them!