Details on the 158" shade

There's a lot of detail I'd like to share about the 158" shade featured in last Friday's post.

The fabric was railroaded- it wasn't perfectly symmetrical in both directions, but nearly, and the repeat was small in either case, so I thought it would be best to have no visible seams.  Instead, we seamed it horizontally and hid the seam under a fold.  Figuring out the logistics was trickier than I thought it would be!  Luckily I got it right, whew.  The repeat is just 4.5" so the folds are a little smaller and closer together than I usually plot for hobbled shades.

I did catch a break on marking the fabric for sewing the tape and rings.  I used a lovely double-wide cotton sateen from Hanes, and could just see through it enough to make the marks by pattern instead of having to measure.  THAT was a huge plus- it not only saved time, but also assured accuracy.  I took this photo of the first shade as pattern placement reference for the following two.

The Rollease Skyline clutch on a 1.5" tube provided a strong lift system.  After using this tube a lot recently for both clutch AND spring lift systems, I think I will now remember without having to look it up: screw eyes for clutch, NO screw eyes for spring.

Another thing I think I finally will remember without having to look it up: for reverse mount hobbled shades, DO NOT put the grommet through the tape!  I had to wiggle the tape free out of every grommet in order to make slight adjustments to the board line.  I also finally got smart while making the adjustments and instead of unstapling, I used a blunt instrument to nudge a bit of lining upward and stapled it to the back of the board.

Did you see what tool I'm using there?  It's our new Milwaukee cordless, battery-operated staple gun!  My hands are no longer able to operate an old-fashioned manual staple gun, and the shade was too far away for the compressor hose, so this new toy I mean tool came in very handy!

The tube, at 158", was too long to safely use without support.  Luckily Rollease has introduced a splice- the Easy-Link.  This allows the tube to be split in half and spliced, with the splice doing double duty as a support bracket.

For a fail-safe during transportation, we used cable tie mounts at each end of each tube, just in case the tube came out of the bracket.  It can't fall far, because it's all strung up to the shade, but it saved some annoyance when it DID happen and we needed to put it back together.  Please note: we snipped the cable ties loose once the shade was installed, because they would add resistance to the lift if they stayed in place.
There are two types of cable tie mounts: one is all in one piece; the other sticks on then you secure it with a screw- that's the one we wound up using.

Oh, and another thing.  If you read the previous post, you might remember that the soft cornices didn't quite fit in the corner, and I had to take them back to adjust the ends.  I made a piece of welting on "wings" with velcro, and velcroed it in between where the new ends met.  I forgot to take a photo of the welt with wings, sorry.

I wish I could say that the pattern flowed around the corner because of meticulous planning, but really it was serendipity that the pattern on the two ends created a near match.  Sometimes luck is better than skill!

It WAS skill, however, and not a bit of luck involved, that the pattern matched preciselty from the soft cornice to the shade!  And I'll gladly take full credit for THAT, as well as the perfect pleat-to-pattern :)

158" wide hobbled shade!

Oversize continues to be a trend here! 
After the 350# of shades, before the Norovirus hit in full force, I worked on three hobbled shades for Denise Wenacur.  Two were 120"- those were the small ones.  The big one was 158"- over 13'.  Then I got really sick for real, and had to postpone the installation for a week.  We finally got there, only to find that the household AND their renovation contractor also had been stricken with Norovirus that same week! 

I'll write a more detailed post next week, but I've had such a rough time this year keeping up with this blog, I didn't want to wait any longer to show a peek of the product and process.
It was a bear to sew- it was both longer and wider than my table- but although this might look like uncontrolled chaos, there actually is order to the mess.

The trusswork John built for oversize shades was just big enough to hold the 158" shade!

We learned A LOT during the fabrication and rigging with the lovable Rollease 1.5" tube clutch lift system.  Though we've used them before, this one was the biggest ever, and I'll detail the process in the next post.  I was grateful to have a way to hang the shade to trouble-shoot and dress it in the workroom instead of at the customer's home.

Not everything went perfectly smoothly on installation day- I had to take back the two soft cornices that met in the far corner, because I hadn't made the right allowance for them to meet. 

It wasn't hard to modify the soft cornices.  We returned the next day to re-install,  in plenty of time for a birthday celebration party!  I was happy we didn't have to leave the room unfinished.

Stay tuned, I'll get to the nitty-gritty next week!

John's genius trusswork

It's time to show off the truss that John built for the new workroom, for hanging and leveling shades.
Derived from lighting trusswork, this frame will hold a 12' wide shade, and will raise right up to the 11' ceiling to just under the lights.

There's an easy-to-operate crank at each end, but it can be raised and lowered by just one person, as long as he/she runs back and forth a few times. 

The stands are wheeled, so the frame can back up against the wall when not in use.

An assortment of clamps placed at uneven intervals give flexibility to hang different board sizes and depths.  For extreme circumstances we can just drill a dustboard right into the wood frame.  The back edge of this wood platform will eventually hold a drapery track for hanging panels for dressing or inspecting.

Best of all, I can work easily from either side of the shade.
It was first seriously used for an oversize shade made from a beautiful Designer's Guild herringbone semi-sheer.

This fabric was shifty and its handling required lots of TLC.

When it was time to shift the fabric on the table to finish the top, we hand-basted a line for both security and reference.

There were a couple of puckers from lax stapling, which we could see when the shade was hung.

These were easy to fix by lowering the shade and adjusting the staples from a ladder.

It's smart to marry an audio engineer!