Fab Fabric Friday: "Nightlife"

Kim Freeman's design choices are pretty nearly impeccable.  Here she has chosen "Nightlife" in colorway "Dancing Queen" by Brentano for a modern and romantic transformation of a family room.

Lined with champagne colored batiste, these draperies softened the room, muted the light, and created just enough privacy.   The other colorways are red ("Disco Inferno") and black ("Last Dance").  

This is one of the craziest fabrics I've ever worked with! 

At first I thought it was unruly and chaotic, but the more I worked with it, the easier it got.  The laser cuts are precise and since you can see through it, it was easy to line up on the table. 

No seaming of widths was necessary since it is double-wide fabric.  Each end has 8" of plain fabric.  For the bottom, to get the correct finished length, I cut off the 8" and sewed it back on then machine top-stitched the wrapped hem.  There was just enough overlap of the cutouts to get a straight line of stitching.

Talk about cutting it close!
I had to trim off 4 rows of cutouts.  The hems were the hardest part of the project- it wasn't easy to keep the fabric from buckling and twisting.

The top header was reinforced with 2" clear buckram.  Inverted pleats allowed us to use minimal fullness so the pattern could show off.   Rods are Techno-Track from Vesta.

"Euro hem" on the sheer was a great convenience!

All in all, once I got to know it, this crazy fabric was a lot of fun to work with and the job an unmitigated success. 

We left behind one very happy homeowner!

Grey is the new............

How do you spell "grey/gray?"  Grey is the British and UK spelling, in use since the AD700s.  Gray is the American spelling since around 1825.  I have always spelled it "grey" which I suppose reflects my reading habits- I've been steeped in 19th century British literature for years.

Anyhow, I've been seeing a whole lot of grey recently.  I guess grey is the new.......... sage?  khaki?  It's most often blended with pale natural or ivory, or sometimes more dusky naturals like sand or mink, with a pop of something hot and brilliant, like orange or mustard or fuschia.
 

For this client, nearly everything we made included a variation of cool grey.  The color-block silk taffeta draperies for the living room and dining room pair grey with two different shades of ivory, divided by that thoroughly modern sequined band from Samuel and Sons. 

The grey is on the lower third of the nine-foot panels, finished in ivory with two-finger top-tack pleats.

In the master bedroom, heavy Donghia silk shades are interlined with black flannel to help reduce pattern wash-out in the sun.  Everyone who saw these shades up close immediately said "Rorschach test!" 

They are spectacular.  From a greater distance the geometric pattern becomes clearer.  Hope to see post-installation pics one of these days!

Super-size me!

Wow, I'm exhausted!  I just sent out two really big jobs, both with beautiful but challenging fabrics, and now I'm sitting with a cup of coffee to decompress.   

This is a beautiful, soft, lush printed velvet, with a gold contrast fabric welt, for 23' of Sheffield valance in a huge bay window.  The sides of the bay are nearly 6' each, and the center is 10 1/2', so the installer wanted to staple the valance on-site, which I totally understand.  But, tacking strips are so not my thing!  To me they're a million times harder than just stapling the whole thing in the studio myself, the normal way, so I can fuss over it.  I would have hinged the boards so it would fit into a van.... oh well.  I will be worrying about the fit until I hear back that it turned out well. 

The other project was 3 button-back kick pleat valances totaling 22'.  The face fabric is a beautiful cotton print, but the contrast fabric was a blackout Apollo lining in gold.  wow.  That stuff made a simple project into a really frustrating ordeal!  But, it's all over now, so I'm just going to relax about it.   See the pretty mauve button in the corner?  The buttons made the job.

Sorry no finished product photos for this work, which took up a giant bite of my week.

Another Limited Fabric Challenge

Holy cow, I forgot all about my blog!  That's how busy it's been here. 









I had another limited fabric challenge this week.   Last week's was those two cute little valances I made out of one yard of pretty striped silk. 

This week I had 10 repeats of a vintage Schumacher print, and needed to make two pretty valances for an attic guest bedroom in an old house.  There were 3 cuts for the big valance, and 2 cuts for the small one; there was not enough to cut individual sections and piece together, so I seamed the widths and cut the scalloped shaped straight across. 

I figured out how much was left in the width for the horns and had enough to gather them- I guess we could  call this a Sheffield variation. 
By cutting on a wider angle than usual I was able to cut enough bias strips for microcord at the hem.   Lip cord in a blend of greens defined the top.

Everyone agreed that these valances fit the bill perfectly- pretty and not too fussy.  There was even enough left to make a little pillow!

Cute Stuff

Happy Friday!  Nothing like some new custom treatments for the kids to start your weekend off right.

What do you make when you have two girls with smallish windows and one yard of beautiful silk?  Right!- shaped interlined flat valances with pleats.

The taper- one of my favorite silhouettes.  There was just enough to make an interesting divided center inverted box pleat.

The girls' adjacent linen closet was the perfect place for this two-yard Lee Jofa remnant. 

I found a scrap of trim in the workroom that did all the right things for this fabric.

Samantha's 9th birthday sleepover party will be colorful with bright new pillows.

I had fun choosing zipper colors!  Thanks to Alicia, The Zipper Lady, I have a big color collection.  With 3 turquoises in stock, I had a hard time picking the best one.