Cafe curtains

"The timeless appeal of cafe curtains."
"Show off your best sewing techniques on cafe curtains."
"Impeccable details make fine cafe curtains."
"A very special pleat showcased on cafe curtains."
"For privacy AND a view, use cafe curtains."
"Cafe curtains, the under-appreciated solution. "
These were all possible titles for this post, but they are too long.  But all of them together comprise a perfect summary.
I was going to write about a different project today, but when Monica Plotka sent photos of these cafe curtains installed, I wanted to post them right away.

The 118" fabric was cut with the stripes running horizontally.  By the most serendipitous chance, the finished length worked out to be exactly the distance between the outer edges of two of the embroidered stripes, which allowed the embroidery to define both the top and the bottom of the curtain.

We used 4" clear fusible buckram from Dofix to reinforce the header, and a 4" bottom hem balances the top.  The embroidery is layered almost exactly over itself, eliminating shadowing. 
A semi-sheer lining from ADO adds body and more privacy.  After the sheer was layered in, the entire curtain was hemmed by hand.

The pleats are tacked by hand with pale grey button thread from Wawak.  The 3-finger pleat is tacked 2" down, right in the middle.  I don't know if this pleat has a name, but I'm calling it a "butterfly pleat." 
Cafe curtains are a great place to show off excellent workmanship.  A special pleat is especially noticed when it's at eye level. 

Cafe curtains afford privacy from the street, but leave the view of the sky and trees.  I wonder why they're not used more often.

There's another detail I wonder if you noticed, too.  The inside of the window frame is painted blue, the wall color.  I love it!  I'm putting this observation at the end of the post to see if anyone reads all the way to the end :) so if you have read to the end, I hope you comment on the inside blue!

A trio of interesting trim applications

Stuff happens in threes, right?  We had 3 interesting trim applications this week.

First, this little 9" x 15" lumbar pillow for Cottages to Castles:

 A shout-out to Alicia The Zipper Lady who carries invisible zipper tape exactly this color:

Ossining designer Elizabeth Harlow had an unusual idea for applying trim to up-style some extremely ordinary ready-made pinch pleat sheers:

For some reason, we kept thinking "Classical"- whether Roman, Greek, or Egyptian, who knows!  But Jen, Camille and I all couldn't get the word "toga" out of our heads when these were done:

At the bottom, a wide raffia braid was centered on the 4" double hem.

I was not sure how I was going to like this, but, I totally LOVE it!

Another project required five separate steps to apply trim to a delicate sheer.  Two separate trims were layered to create these blue and white alternating clusters of tiny glass beads:

The five-step process began with joining the two trims with 1/8" Sealah tape.  The lip was hand-basted to the edge, then machine sewn between the face and facing:

Another row of machine stitching at the far edge of the tape kept the layers secure:

Finally, Camille doubled over the facing and painstakingly hand-sewed it.  This sheer could not be ironed, except for a very light dry iron- NO STEAM!

 

I don't know if I'll ever see these finished curtains hanging- I hope so.......