Wednesday, March 1, 2017

A busy hallway!

No matter how much workroom space you have, you always wish you had more, right?
I'm very lucky that in addition to my workroom space, I also have a L-O-N-G hallway, and I use the wall for drafting.  Recently I've been drafting those arched swags I mentioned yesterday.
I leveled the frame on a workroom stand and taped out the shape, reference points, and hung plumb lines.
 Using Ann Johnson's Anatomy of a Swag Vol. 2 as my guide, I draped chain weight to determine the shape and proportions of the swags.  This took a LOT of experimentation.  There were 3 fixed points: a center finished length of 18", a short crossover point of 15", and a finished width of 106".  Those numbers determined the shape of the swags.
As I was in the thick of it, along came two (TWO) Fed Ex drivers: one in the normal delivery truck with a big order from Rowley Company, and the other in a semi with a well-packaged 11' custom Ripplefold pole from J L Anthony!  (wait'll you see it!  it's spectacular)
We opened the box with the pole to be sure it was in perfect condition, and I went back to pattern-making.  As I perfected the chain weight draping, I recorded the measurements on the worksheets in Ann's book.
The masking tape was handy for making notes as I worked.

I taped gridded paper to the wall and traced the outlines of the swags.
All those tapes and draped chains were distracting, so I removed all but the actual swag shapes, to be sure I was satisfied with the proportions and silhouette.  Next- creating the swag pattern.......

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