London shade with all the bells and whistles, and making a knife-pleated ruffle

I have been awfully delinquent about posting!- between hurricane Irene, a back injury, finger injuries (more on that later!), an early-autumn cold, and that freakish White Halloween storm, my ability to focus on writing has been.... fuzzy.
At least I've been pretty faithful about taking photos as I work.  Time to start catching up sharing recent projects with you.


Here is a beautiful London shade, with lots of goodies.

The top is stapled to the 3/4" side of a board, and the rope trim hot-glued to cover the staple ant-trail.

The fabric is a breathtaking Scalamandre silk Chinoise print, as crisp as a page of parchment, and the brilliant blue contrast is a soft, drapey Scalamandre moire- I think it must be a silk/cotton blend, but I"m not sure- no acetate here!   These are luxury fabrics that inspire awe just to touch.  It's a pleasure to work with such fabrics.

The pleats are made of 12" of blue moire, and micro-corded with the same.  The silk is interlined, but the blue is not- I was afraid it would add too much bulk, especially at the board line.

The microcord was sewn to the silk and interlining together.

Knife pleating and box pleating is easy with Rowley's pleating tape.

Just stick it to the overlocked ruffle strips before sewing, then fold as you sew to create the pleats.

There are different lines in different colors to create various pleat styles and sizes.  Once the strip is pleated, just peel off the tape.  I even re-used the tape to make the ruffle for the second shade.

This ruffle was 3" long, so I started the rings 3.5" up to be sure the ruffle wouldn't be hidden when the shade was raised.