Does this fabric look familiar? Back in the winter I posted pictures of a small shade out of this fabric. It was fun using twill tape to band the edges and the shade turned out great.
The decorator wanted to use it again for this shade which is wider than the width of the fabric. We needed to find a way to join the widths.
The face fabric is a very sheer silk, with a 1/4" hemp rope woven in horizontally. The rope is very bulky, making it impossible to sew the widths, so we thought of using the twill tape to hold the widths together and at the same time hiding the join line. The twill tape is topstitched down each side, through all the layers.
This is where some modern workroom tools really made it possible to fabricate this shade with confidence.
The shade was made almost entirely on the table. Since you can see through the sheer silk and the sheer linen lining, I used the gridded canvas table to press and lay out the fabric and keep the rope lines and the lining grain line straight.
Adhesive tape was used as a basting tool. Once the half widths were positioned next to the full center width, I ran adhesive tape down the join line and pressed the twill tape into place. I also used the tape to position the twill tape used for the banding. The tapes were also pinned to keep the layers together.
Fabric staples across the top kept the fabrics from shifting while the shade went off to the machine for topstitching.
Back to the table, wrong side up, the grid again assisted in marking for the rings. As a matter of fact, I didn't even mark- I just followed the rope lines and the vertical grid lines and sewed the rings on by hand right on the table. The clear plastic rings and tan lift cord are nearly unnoticeable from the front.
The twill tape in folded in half and made a pocket for the weight bar which I sewed right behind the bottom band, following the topstitching line.
I've had my gridded canvas table for 4 or 5 years now and can't imagine going back to fabricating anything without it.
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