Night at the Opera

Another Opera Balloon Shade...... 142" wide!... with 5 poufs of varying widths.  The fabric is a semi-heavy silk & rayon blend.  It's lined with napped sateen, though the draperies are lined and interlined.

Can you believe- this is the fabric?  The gold is the right side; but, amazingly, the wrong side is that acid green.

Workroom shot:

This shade is functional, but it will never be fully lowered, so when it's down it's just flat.  It was really cool to see the green glowing through the part of the fabric that was over the open window where the sun came through.

As the shade was raised, the green disappeared....

When fully raised, only the gold is apparent.  

From this angle you get a hint of the green.  This shade operates with a 30# Rollease clutch.  If you make these, you might be interested to know that the weight bar is attached 5 rings up.

Here are two other opera shades we've shown previously: this one with a header and 5 poufs of equal size, in an upholstery weight fabric-

This one with 5 narrower sections, also in an upholstery weight fabric-

Another opera balloon shade

It's flat when fully lowered, and pulls up dramatically, magically.  I left it hanging in the workroom for the decorator's twins, four and three quarters years old by their reckoning, to see when they accompanied their mom to pick it up.  They were enthralled by the shade.  And I was enthralled by them.  I wish I'd taken a video of them raising it!
See how the pattern laid out?  The blue flowers are arranged nearly symmetrically.  That was the purest luck!  The board is 65" and I had 2 widths of fabric to work with.  There were no choices to be made about how to lay out the pattern- it could only be how it was.  Luckily the eye-catching blue is the most perfectly placed.

Opera Balloon Shade

I just love the drama of an opera balloon shade.  

I asked the decorator to wait til the installation was finished before coming into the room.  

When lowered, this shade is straight across the bottom like any ordinary balloon shade, but the special stringing method causes an opera shade to raise its sections to different heights.

So for the decorator we staged a theatrical curtain raising, and it got rave reviews.