More on Showhouse Draperies

The showhouse draperies were installed this week- and I continued to have camera woes.  I forgot my regular camera, and thanks to some lighting issues, the iPhone pics I took are not too great.

But here is one shot, at least.  The panels are stapled to a curved board, and dressed with luscious, luxurious tassel tiebacks, which, as you can see, are not shown here.

Once the panels were sewn, I made a sampler of pleats for Susan to choose from.  

We both had the same favorite: a three-finger fanned pleat, henceforth  dubbed "the showhouse pleat."  The center finger of the pleat is more prominent than the two side fingers, and the back of the pleat is fanned out and tacked- actually once on the board, the fanning is reinforced by the staples inside the pleat that attach it to the board face.

Also in the running: a regular three-finger pinch pleat, side-tacked:

Two-finger pleat, too casual for this room, though it's one of my favorite pleats:

Goblet pleat, nice enough but too predictable: 

Three-finger regular pinch pleat, front-tacked, which I really love, but for this situation Susan preferred the side tack:

And top tack, which is just wrong in this context and with this fabric:
because of the embroidery, the fabric was not consistently pliant, so the embroidered parts were stiff and bulky while the plain parts were supple, making it impossible to create even fingers.

The original inspiration was a storefront drapery display Susan saw at Cowtan & Tout in London, with a four-finger flared pleat; but this bulky, interlined, embroidered silk was impossible to shape into four fingers, for the same reasons as the top tack above, as you can see: