Super-fun fabrics

I love the trusswork John built for hanging and leveling our shades! 
Take a good look at it, because tomorrow I'll show an alternative use for the apparatus.
The following shades, for Crosstown Shade and Glass, are blackout with our special no-pinholes-of-light method.  This sunny yellow with appliqued circles and embroidery was fun to work with.  At first we thought there was no way we would be able to join the widths and get a good pattern match, but once we saw the trick to the match, it was easy. 

Are those folds pleated to pattern??- ah, uh, um, YES!  Of course.   And the 4" padded fascia is pattern matched to the shade.

 

All of our blackout shades have internal ribs.  They prevent the folds from losing their definition, and prevent the homeowner from losing her mind, since she won't have to dress these folds every time the shade is raised.

This whimsical embroidery was equally delightful to work with.

Again with the pleat to pattern.... in this case, every other fold matches.  We assess the pattern repeat to determine if we can match every fold, every other, or every third.  In fact, I'm presenting a live webinar in June (to the WCAA Virtual Chapter) on this very subject.  Once you get used to pleating to pattern, whether on shades or draperies, you won't go back to random!

The attention to detail is especially effective with side-by-side identical shades.  I love how the pattern flows from the fascia to the shade. 

One way to make a ribbed shade

Ribs give a bit of support to flat romans, helping them fold neatly.

Ribs aren't foolproof; there are some fabrics that they just don't help at all; but they were great in these 3 linen shades with napped sateen lining.

There are different rib materials: plastic, metal, fiberglass; and many ways of using them. 
This is one way. 

The shade begins with the lining: pockets are sewn into the back side of napped sateen.  Since these shades are 86" long, we spaced the rows 8" apart.  The default spacing of 6" would've made way too many folds, all stacked up on top of each other.

The pockets are pressed downward, and the lining laid onto the prepared face fabric.  The gridded tabletop is indispensable for producing these shades. 

No matter how meticulously the pockets are sewn, you still need to go along each row with a straightedge and make sure the seams are as straight as possible.  The side hems are folded over the lining, but not yet sewn.

At the bottom, the hem is basted in place.  Yes, it could be pinned, but basting is better.

The vertical rows are marked for rings with purple disappearing pen, and ladder tape is run.  At the bottom, the row of rings above the hem are sewn, and the ladder tape pinned in place above the hem.  Note that the side rows of rings are not placed over the side hems, but just past the edge of the hems.

At the top, the topmost row of rings are sewn.  These are reverse mounted, so the grommet placement is marked with pencil.  The board line is marked allowing an extra 1/4".  The cutting line is marked, and the word "REVERSE" is lightly penciled in to help me remember not to staple the shade the regular way!!!  This step has saved me a lot of time :)  The ladder tape is stapled to the excess fabric for safekeeping.

Now for the Zen portion of the fabrication: sewing on the rings.  If the seams did not absolutely perfectly follow a straight line, it's ok, as long as you've marked perfectly for the rings.  The ring can go a smidgen above the seam or a hair into the pocket area.  The ribs will keep straight inside the pockets. 

When all rings are sewn, the shade goes to the sewing machine for the weight bar pocket- several steps that I forgot to photograph.  The shade is laid back out onto the table, the side hems opened up, and the ribs inserted into the pockets.

The side hems are folded back over, pressed lightly, and hand-sewn to the lining.  The weight bar is inserted and the pocket tacked shut.

All it needs now are the grommets, and it's ready for the board!  After the lift mechanism is secured, the shade is strung and leveled; lastly the valance is attached and it's ready for packing up.

Fab Fabric Friday!- and the shades we made!

What a brilliant balance of color and design:

Kravet's "Exotic Travels"- embroidered faux silk

I enjoyed making shades for this laundry room.

And a seat and back cushion for the mud room.

I have a new method for making ribbed shades, at least some ribbed shades.  I make pockets on the inside of the lining, and press them downwards towards the bottom.

I fold the side and bottom hems over and sew the bottom and one side.

For these shades I used Rowley's mesh tube shroud; when it was all done except for the side I did not hand-hem yet, I slid in the weight bar and the ribs;

Then hemmed that last side border.

The last row of mesh tube shroud is a little awkward to sew, with the rods and ribs in place, but it goes quickly.

The result is a nice, neat back, especially important on the smaller of these 2 shades which is mounted on a door.  Whoa, I forgot to take a picture of the back!  Here's one of a different shade in the same house, with ladder tape rather than shroud:

Arched Flat Roman Shade

How do you like our arched window treatment?  Really, that IS an arched flat Roman shade!  It's a shame that you can't see the arch; the installer said it fit perfectly. 

The homeowner does not like her arch.  She wanted to hide it.  The only proof I have that we made an arched Roman shade is the workroom photos.   That's John, holding the shade and waving to me.

Here he is, trying to suck in his gut for this picture.  As if.  He's a skinny rail these days.  The workroom is a real mess, though, isn't it?  Trash can overflowing, chairs up on the work table, must have been a busy day.  Ha.

This is a ribbed flat Roman.  The frame is made entirely from FirmaFlex.  

The Rollease clutch is set in enough that brackets can be used on the sides of the window molding.  You can see that we used mesh tube shroud for this shade.

I forgot to take a picture of the front of the frame, before stapling the shade on.  Here I've tried to pull the fabric back and get a shot of the inside of the front.  It's made to be open, so the installer can get his drill in there and put in a couple of screws up into the top of the window. 

The Empire valance is soft and sweet, made from an upholstery fabric with the shade matelasse as the lining.

Lip cord defines the edge.  I forgot to take a close-up of the draperies, which are made from the same face fabric plus the lip cord plus brush fringe.

Did I mention this is for a newborn baby girl's room?  A nice room to wake up in!

 Sweet dreams, baby!

Update on the Top-Down Shades

The shades shown in the previous post, just below this one, were completed and installed a week ago.  Pictures?  No, sorry, no pictures! 

These were top-down only hobbled shades with a Rollease clutch and a self-fabric valance.  There were three layers of fabric: the face fabric was a semi-sheer with a woven pattern, a middle layer of a nearly-upholstery weight woven mini-diamond, and the outer back was blackout- the new Bella Notte "Silky" from Angel's Distributing.
There were five shades, all with 2" banding in the mini-diamond on 3 sides with mitered bottom corners.
Shall I mention now that three of the five were side-by-side in a bay window?
Rowley's new encased cord served as both the hobbling tape and the lift cord.  Luckily, for hobbled shades the encased cord can be machine-sewn, saving a bit of time.

This was by far the most complicated job I have ever done, both physically and mentally.
Where shall I begin???

Right off the bat, the first challenge was banding the sheer.  Glue-basting helped keep the layers from shifting, but none of my sewing experience could mitigate the take-up that naturally occurs whenever two fabrics are sewn together.  The pattern was nice and straight at the bottom, but had a big downward smile at the top.  Usually you try to compromise and put the skewed end wherever it would be least noticeable, but with a top-down shade, both top and bottom are prominent!

Once the three fabrics were layered and the side hems pressed in, the lines for the rib pockets were drawn with that miraculous disappearing purple pen.  Some blackouts won't hold that purple mark for long, but fortunately the new "Silky" did.
The new "hazardous loop" standards prevent us from making a combined fabric-plus-tape that exceeds 16.9", which means that with 6" "ring" spacing, the rows for pockets can't be more than 9.9" apart.  I was able to stagger the repeats at about 9.5", and the "ring" spacing was 5.75", so the pattern on the folds were consistent on every other fold, AND it met with the hazardous loop guidelines. 

The pockets for the ribs were relatively easy to sew, with plenty of pinning, but unfortunately the textured sheer was the inside of the pocket and made inserting the ribs a difficult task.  Many of the pockets had to be strategically opened to get the ribs through.  Rowley's clear plastic ribs made it through okay, but that was plan B- originally I wanted to use the 1/8" fiberglass ribs.  But they caught on the fabric and would not slide through, and would have caused runs in the fabric if we'd tried to force them.

But back to the pockets.  There were 10 rib pockets, and I sewed every other one in the opposite direction, to keep the layers from shifting.  My arms are all torn and scabby from the pins gouging them while I wrangled with the very heavy shades at the sewing machine.  The next step, sewing on the encased cord by machine, was probably the easiest part of the whole job.  I kept the top unfinished until all five shades were done, so I could lay them out and make sure the pattern was consistent on all.

Did I mention yet that three of these shades were side-by-side in a bay window?  Oh, yeah.  I did.  So it was essential that the folds line up perfectly with each other on each shade.

That part was so totally not fun.  I made good use of the printed grid canvas and the purple pen, and drew all over the table and made notes right on the canvas about where each fold needed to fall and what part of the pattern had to be at the very top.

Remember the part about how the pattern turned from straight lines into a downward smile towards the top of the shade?  Well, I have no idea how, but by the time it was all done, that line seemed less smiley, and also the busy-ness of the folds and little flowers made the skew less noticeable.

After the pocket for the top was pressed in, John put in the little brass grommets that allow the lift cords out of the pocket.  Then the pocket was sewn- and at that moment I realized the top of the tape needed to be sewn accurately into the seam- yet another step I hadn't been able to think through until I was actually doing it.

These shades had a regular 3/8" round bottom weight bar, but they also needed a top bar that is very rigid which keeps the top of the shade straight, with no sway.  Shopping with John one day in the electrical department at Home Depot, we found something called "wire molding" which is extremely strong metal housing for running wires.  We bought that for the top weight bar because it had virtually no flex in either direction.  It turned out to be perfect.  Brilliant John used the reciprocating saw with the compressor (a non-manual hacksaw) to cut grooves in the metal and we wound the cord around the bar making sure it was settled into the groove so it couldn't slip.  After the two middle cords were tied on this way (there were 4 lift lines) we borrowed again from the electricians and use a wire  snaking technique to get the strings through the pocket, followed by the bar.  I know I'm not describing this well.  (I should make a YouTube video.  Yeah, in my spare time!)  Anyhow, it worked, and let the record show that I would never have been able to make these shades without John's imaginative engineering!

I also must mention that I couldn't have made them by the deadline without a dear friend's patient and good-natured stubborn persistence- she put in a whole back-breaking day of what I had promised as "fun" and "interesting" tedium, did not walk out on me, AND never complained!

Leveling a top-down shade is a major ordeal, and having to level five of them identically is just cruel and unusual.  We were not going to be present at the installation, so we had to come up with a way to make all the lines adjustable.  The orbs used for shades were the answer.  These shades have two sets of lines:  the guide cords which set the length, and the operating cords.  We used orbs at each end of each line, and tied them off leaving a long tail.  This allowed the installer to make slight adjustments.

We were thrilled when we finally heard back from the decorator on installation day that everything had gone well and the next day we heard that the man of the house had called the decorator with his compliments on the job!!!

I feel that I am babbling now- I am sure that no one reading this has the slightest idea what I'm talking about, and I'd be astonished if anyone's made it to the end of this post.  I'm sorry I don't have photos.  The fabrication was just so intense, I had no time to stop and take pictures.  And this was one of those jobs I will never see installed.  But if anything you've read piques your curiosity and you have any questions about any of the process, please let me know and I'll try to be more thorough.

Yet another ribbed shade method

When this order came in for blackout shades with ribs, I knew I needed to develop a new method.
My standard method has been to make skinny pockets in the back for the ribs, but with blackout lining the stitching would leave horizontal light-bleed lines.
Though I don't love using adhesives- I like to think I sew, not glue, for a living- I know that blackout is all about NOT sewing, because every time the lining is pierced with needle or pin, light is allowed through.
So I worked out a non-sewn ribbed shade method that I like.
The weight bar pocket tape sold by Rowley was used for the rib pockets.  There is probably a cheaper alternative, but this is what I had on hand and it worked beautifully. 
After pressing the sides of the lining to 1" less than the finished width, I adhered the pockets to the wrong side of the lining, using adhesive tape from Atlanta Thread.
The lining was turned right side up onto the wrong side of the face fabric, which had been pressed to size.  I ran rows of adhesive tape up each side but kept the paper on until after the rings were hand-sewn and the ribs inserted, then I reached under and released the paper, pressing the lining into place.
These shades had bottom trim, so I turned up a 2" hem and glued it in the back and glued on the trim.
I used tiny stitches to reinforce all the stress points of the shade so the glue and adhesive didn't have to bear all the burden of keeping the shade together.  Also, of course, the tacking used to put the rings on goes through all layers, including the top of the pockets, so the pockets are secure as well.
There were three shades on one headrail, and they turned out perfectly, I think!  They're on their way to being installed, and if I have time I'll run over and get a photo today.  If not, I'll get pictures in a week or two when we install the swags in the dining room.
I totally forgot to take pictures while I worked!  So the one above is the only one I have, but it does show a lot of what I just wrote about.
I think I'll use this method for two more shades I'm about to make, even though they aren't blackout.  I like the hidden ribs and pockets.

A Miscellany

Here is a collection of recent projects.

The first picture is my very own hybrid: a flat Roman shade, ribbed in back, with relaxed Roman folds over a straight bottom.  We wanted the bottom straight so the relaxed folds didn't pool on the shelf and also so the bottom corners would not be uncovered.  I've never seen a shade like this anywhere else, so as far as I know, I invented this myself!

If you're interested in how this is made, I'll do a separate post about it.  Let me know in the comment section at the end of this post. 

Imperial valances with jabots, self microcording

          Kick pleated valance in adjacent kitchen bay window.

  

Remember these pillows?  Here they are on a campaign bed, with the tapestry hanging.

Another "winter trees" shade- it just never gets old!

Calvin Klein sheer, Roman shade

Self-lined, hand-sewn.  This reminded me of fine Madras.

The Sea of Tranquility

I have a silly propensity for naming things.  My husband and I name everything: cars, appliances, favorite tools.
I named this shade while I was working on it, a borrowed name: "Sea of Tranquility"- but it fit.  I tried to remember, where is the Sea of Tranquility, anyhow?  I thought I would like to go there.  I thought perhaps somewhere where the Indian Ocean meets the Pacific.  I thought I could set sail on the Sea of Tranquility and drift there a good long time.
Haha- it's on the moon!  How could I have forgotten that.  Guess I won't be going anytime soon.
This fabric was chosen by Joshua Katz of Fabu Fabrics for his client's bedroom, where I think it will lend some of its lunar serenity.

I used the new 1/8" fiberglass ribs from Rowley Co instead of the plastic ribs.  This shade was so sweet that I splurged and used my dainty white enamel-coated metal rings.

There are probably a million ways to make ribbed shades, but this is how I make them.  I loathe rows of stitching on the fronts of shades so the lining is sewn with pockets then hand-sewn to the back side of the face fabric.  The rings are caught to the face with just one little stitch of doubled upholstery thread.



Next project: an old favorite in an encore performance in a different color.  In the past few weeks I've made shades out of this fabric in white, and cafe curtains out of the natural colorway.  Now another set of shades with this loop fringe at the bottom.
Those two nearly-gone spools of Gutermann thread represent the two hottest colors of the past 6 or 8 months.  Time to re-order thread!