What we did for the past two weeks.....

It is so much fun to watch an empty house being transformed into a home.  With her distinctive style, Denise Wenacur applies color and texture to a room's elements, creating a cohesive whole, like a painting.
Although not fully furnished yet, our recent window treatment installations have set this renovated house well on its way to looking like a home.

Living Room Before

In the living room, blending textures and tones, a smooth grey roman shade is flanked by slubby linen grommeted panels on brushed nickel poles.

These panels were two full widths per side.  Eight #12 grommets were used per width on 1" poles, and the each panel stacks down to about a foot wide.
On an adjacent wall, we used single width panels on a window half this size with no room for stackback.
 
Thanks to various webinars from CHF Academy, Rowley Company, and other sources, I think maybe I've finally gotten my grommet knowledge internalized.
The most important tip I that I learned that I can pass on is: make a template out of buckram.  Actually cut the holes and thread them onto a pole.  That's how you can be really sure that you're planning correctly and that the seam isn't going to come out facing forward.  The other most important piece of information is that you always must have an even number of grommets.

In the dining room, the embroidered floral kick pleat valance with side panels warms up the space, while the gold textured solid relaxed shade offers privacy.

Viewed here from the second floor landing, the family room is warm and inviting, with new furniture, shades, and cornices. 

Here's the family room before.





To maximize the potential light in the sunroom, the homeowners keep the shades up as high as possible.  But for viewing TV, the shades are lowered, and the double-sided blackout lining method eliminates the pesky "pinholes of light" that we workrooms dread.

From outside, the lining folds up neatly.  All of these downstairs windows had a generous 3" of mounting space inside, which made it feasible to do the double-sided shades.  It also gave enough room to use the larger Rollease clutch which operates SO smoothly. 

The kitchen sink window is dressed with a kick pleat valance out of the same textured gold as in the dining room.

The large master bedroom window is quite tall at 110".  The homeowners need light control.  A blackout shade would have been unmanageably massive and heavy, so  Denise offered blackout draperies with a light-diffusing sheer behind, on a double track with glides, operated with sturdy 5' metal batons in a matching finish.

The smaller window on the adjacent wall had too little room for draperies, so Denise chose a flat Roman shade.  We made this with our latest new method for eliminating pinholes of light, which involves two layers of blackout lining.  More on that another time.

Not photographed: a small shade for the back door, another for an upstairs bathroom, and sheer stretch panels for the front hall sidelights.
A big thank you to my fantastic installer Mario Fuentes...........
And that's what we've been doing for the past two weeks!

Extreme blackout; or, where are the pinholes of light?

"Extreme blackout"- this blog post title could actually apply also to my blog in general- I having been out of sight since early July!  I've checked the blog stats and am shocked (but delighted) to see that people are still reading this blog every day even though it's been 6 weeks since my last post..... 
Ever since returning from vacation, I have been swamped with very intense production deadlines.  It's hard to remember to take photos when working so hard, but I do have some, and a few stories to tell.
Here's one of them.

"Extreme blackout" is what I call this homeowner's request for her bedrooms.  We created three-layer treatments that came as close as one could get to total blackout, without fully covering the windows with draperies, which she did not want.
We installed phase one of her renovated home on July 31, the family moved in on August 1, and on August 4 their baby boy was born.  He came home the next day to his own very, very dark bedroom.

Now that is DARK!
Here's what you see by daylight:

More on the toppers in a future post- meanwhile, thanks to Joanna Braxton for her instructional DVD on making these sleek cornices....

Now, you might be wondering, where are the pinholes of light that are the inherent drawback to blackout shades, the thorn in the side for shade fabricators, and the bane of our existence?

Yeah, we solved that problem.








A double-sided shade with multiple layers of linings made it possible.  Here's what the back looks like (this photo is of a similar shade in another room.)   These are serious shades, folks, more like furniture than curtains! 

BUT FIRST.
Before going into detail, I want to acknowledge that my train of thought about those pesky pinholes of light began during an enlightening webinar by Susan Woodcock (Home Dec Gal) which I attended in the spring.  She developed her own clever way of dealing with the pinholes, which over a couple of months percolated through my brain and evolved into this method for this particular job.

First we made the shade using three layers of lining.  Next to the face, Bella Notte Silky Blackout.  Then interlining, and finally regular cotton sateen.

The shade is strung, using ladder tape on the outer two rows.

Another layer of Silky Blackout is tacked over each ring, one tack on each side of the ring.  So one layer of blackout hides the hole(s) in the other layer.  No pinholes of light!

Coming up next: more on the double-sided blackout; more rooms with variations on the three-layer treatment; more on the slender cornices; more on box pleated draperies.  No more 6-week hiatus for me.  Thanks for hanging in there, and coming back!

Double-sided ribbed roman shade- at last!

I've been wanting to try making one of these for years.  A double-sided shade lifts from cords sandwiched in between two shades which fold up independently of each other.

At last the perfect opportunity arose: for Denise Wenacur's client, a basement space with a playroom and a gym, with a window between so the adults can see the children.  They wanted two shades, one in each room, but I thought I had an even better idea.
It worked perfectly.
From the gym you can operate the shade and see into the playroom.

 On the playroom side, you can see through the window the valance that hides the clutch and the grommets that allow the strings to lead up to the headrail.  The pleats fold up neatly thanks to the ribs inside.

Before making the client's shade, I needed to make more than a mockup- rather, a full size sample.  As I made it I thought of better ways to do it, so the final product isn't made quite like this one was.

Both shades have this in common: the ribs are secured in the side hems.  For the mockup, the ribs were tucked into the side hem which was secured with Sealah tape.  For the customer's shade, the side hems were hand-sewn.

 

 Twin stitches were made through both layers and provided a channel for the lift cord.

The actual shade was lined, with a sheer, to keep bulk to a minimum.  The lift cord was secured at the bottom, inside where the weight bar will be sewn.   An X-shaped stitch on the front side only created the channel for the lift cord, and when it was all assembled and hung, stab-stitches were made to hold the layers together.

On the playroom side the valance hides all the workings, and at the ends small flaps keep the underside of the board out of view.