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SO.........WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON TODAY??

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Translucent valances

The designer wanted a very minimal flat top treatment, but not an upholstered cornice.  I imagined a valance as translucent as the drapery, but she did not want soft and drapey.  The solution was this semi-rigid valance made with fusible webbing.
I just love how this turned out!  The light diffusion created such a dreamy effect.
The draperies are lined with poly batiste in champagne.  The hand-sewn side hems allow the fabric to cascade smoothly.
The valance was created by sandwiching fusible webbing in between the same batiste and the face fabric.  That's silicone paper underneath, to keep the webbing from fusing through to the table top.
I could just barely see the table grid through the sheer, which helped keep the pattern straight as I pressed from the center outwards to fuse the layers together.
The layers were transferred to the rotary cutting grid table and carefully trimmed.
The selvedge was saved, trimmed to size, and used as binding for the bottom edge- I do love topstitched binding!- and this minimal finish was so much more effective than any trim could have been- and so much better than a hem.
 This is one of my most favorite recent projects.

5 comments:

  1. You are such an inspiration, Deborah. Thanks, as always, for sharing your creations!!

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    1. Frances, I originally got this idea from someone else, I then just took it a little further. I want to experiment more with it.

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  2. If I were not retired, I would have signed up for all your classes at the Custom Workroom Conference. You are so talented and have such a unique, original approach to fabrication!

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    1. Hi Merlyn!
      Coming from you, that is high praise! Thank you so much. I owe the forum in general and you in particular for helping me with all the on-the-job learning, without which I'd have been out of business ages ago!
      When Susan announced the CWC, I thought it was high time I started to give back in a more substantial way, and I'm so excited to be transitioning into the education world.
      Sometimes I worry that my- as you call it, "unique and original approach"- is TOO outside the box, but what I hope to communicate is more my solution-oriented approach rather than a bunch of instructions with numbers like hem sizes and ring spacing etc etc.
      You've contributed so much to this community, your encouragement means the world to me!!!!
      Thanks so much
      Deb

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