I earned badges in all kinds of needlework when I was a girl, and I'm always amazed when those skills acquired at a young age come in handy now. Even beading skills have come in handy for repairing broken bead tassel trims.
If it were not for the inconsistent pattern repeat, this fabric sure would've made the Fab Fabric Friday list, but as it turned out, we needed my childhood darning skills to make this shade happen.
Through most of the cuts, the embroidery lined up at least adequately well, but as you can see in the above photo, one motif was horribly off. I knew I could not join the widths by sewing right sides together by machine; not only because of the pattern not matching, but also because the raised embroidery "walked" under the presser foot. So I pressed the seam allowances into place and..... joined the widths by hand from the front. Yes, I joined the widths by hand from the front, a first for me! (Thank you, Penny, for a long-ago post that inspired me!) Come to think of it, there's another childhood sewing skill put to good use! It sure did take awhile, two seams each 70" long......starting at the top, the other end looked like it was about 5 miles away! That's when you put on some Van Morrison and just sing along through the sewing.
I gently nudged and squished the fabric together to get the embroidery to line up, until I got to that one motif, where no amount of cajoling would convince the two sides to compromise; there I had to take more drastic corrective measures.
That's when the darning skills were called up. I practiced until I got the hang of using white thread to fill in the space to make it look like the lines were continuous. It was awkward at first, but I got better, and took out my first attempt and re-darned it.
Here is the result. What do you think?
A quick iPhone shot from the installer after it was hung:
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