Drapery over Top Treatment

I am really liking this recent trend of layering drapery panels over top treatments, a reversal of what we are accustomed to seeing.  This is the third or fourth recent project with this layering arrangement.

The inverted pleat panels are finished with a mitered tacking strip so it will fit easily and with as little bulk as possible.   

To make installation as easy as possible for the installer, we prepare the boards ahead of time.  Here the valance underlayer is stapled and the board covered.  The inverted pleat panels will be stapled on-site.   The industrial strength velcro will hold the bishop-sleeve overlayer.   There is a little screw eye near the back of the board with coiled string that matches the lining of the bishop-sleeve: the string loops through the screw eye and will run down the back of the bishop-sleeve to the tassel tie-back to hold it in place.

Curved Wall

I had it pretty easy with this curved kick pleated valance: the installer measured, made the template, and cut and covered and hinged the boards ahead of time.

I really wish I had the glam shot for this but I never had a chance to see it after installation.

In all it was about 16' of valance- one side was a curved eat-in area and the other 8' extended straight across a sliding door.  The decorator called to tell me that it was gorgeous, made my day!

Turban Swags

If you want to learn how to draft your own swag patterns and troubleshoot to fine-tune your swag, you can't do better than to consult these two books by Ann Johnson.   These books are regular lunch-time reading for me.

I pored over them when I had a recent order for two Turban swag valances, and learned that a Turban swag is not simply a swag with one side made wider to wrap around the board; rather, it is a hybrid: the top-mounted side is a regular swag, and the return-mounted side is a boxed swag.  Two patterns must be drafted and joined.

Both of the valances for my order were quite wide, and were to have only two swags each.  That meant that the top-mounted half was actually the equivalent of half of a 100" swag!     
In this case, the top is pleated, and the return sides are scrunched.   We had to do a good bit of improvising because of the nature of the slinky, stretchy, satin fabric- more on that below.
This is not the glam shot- in fact the swags are barely dressed- but you get the idea.

I followed the instructions for dropping plumb lines from the board to determine the line where the regular swag and the boxed swag meet; and I draped chain weight to get the exact finished measurements and the specified short point at the overlap in the center. 

I made my pattern and when I stapled it onto the board, it fit just the way I wanted it to except that I found I needed to trim a little off the bottom curve.  I just used a Sharpie pen to draw the bottom curve where I wanted it, then trimmed off the excess.

The fabric was a slinky, stretchy satin- and it was interlined.  Here it is, again, not quite dressed!
It was an extremely difficult swag to drape, in the end; although the mock-up draped just the way I planned, the actual swag was so heavy and stretchy that I had to modify it to make it fit the specifications.  Pleats on the returns absolutely would not hold their shape so we turned them into scrunched/gathered returns. 
Luckily the installer is very talented and was able to dress the swags perfectly once the valances were hung.  The decorator and the homeowner were delighted, and I was relieved when they called to tell me so.  

Outdoor decorating to make Ralph Lauren drool!

The prettiest farm in the world, to me, is Kitchwan Farm in Ossining, owned by my friend Linsay and her family.   The farm feels like a big outdoor living space and is treated like a canvas. 

On a recent golden November afternoon, Linsay arranged chairs and textiles around a fire pit, with a basket of marigolds ready for making leis.  Move over, Ralph and Martha! 

11/11/11 is Corduroy Appreciation Day!

Okay, so who knew there was a Corduroy Appreciation Club?  And that today- 11/11/11- is Corduroy Appreciation Day?  you know, uh, 11/11/11.  This is the date that when expressed in writing most resembles corduroy since 11/11/1111, which was 900 years ago and I don't think corduroy was even invented then.  Thanks to Slow Cloth for pointing this out.  I totally missed the New York Times article yesterday. 

Anyhow:

The only corduroy I could find in my workroom today is this tote bag- a particularly nice one with pockets, sturdy, lined, welted, underwired to hold its shape, from Neiman Marcus.   Thanks to my sister-in-law Marguerite- I am the frequent beneficiary of her eagle eye for red accessories!   Bags, scarves, wallets, socks, business card cases, you name it- if it's red, she snags it for me. 

If you're interested in corduroy in quilts, check out this blog post by Barbara Brackman. I myself once used corduroy prominently in a quilt- the first quilt I ever made, in fact, circa 1979.  This was no art quilt.  It was made the old-fashioned way- using scraps of fabric leftover from clothing that I made and actually wore, an old blue cotton blanket for the filler and the binding, and some pink terrycloth for the back that I bought to make something but never used.  

I can't remember what the corduroy was originally used for, but I had enough to make a border for both front and back.  The colors used to be a lot brighter!  Although this quilt is rags and tatters now, I keep it because it was my first, and the earliest embodiment what became the spirit of my taste: what we now call repurposing; what later came to be called shabby chic; and a mixing of disparate elements in a style that we now kindly refer to as eclectic.  But I know that really this quilt is just plain weird.  Hey, it was 1979!!

I've always been a big fan of corduroy, and I'm glad that it has its own special day, but I think the most important thing to take away from Corduroy Appreciation Day is the realization that fabric nuts of all kinds are just plain crazy.

211" of Sheffield valance

I want to show you the ladies' lounge at a local country club, just to give you an idea of the scale and context of this 211" modified Sheffield valance.

And here is 80% of the monster valance.  The decorator could not stand in a place to get a good angle to show the whole window at once. 

Five sections of about 40" each follow the lines of the individual windows, and the jabots make up the difference at the ends.

The workroom table is 144" long but the valance is 211".   Luckily the trash can is the same height as the table and is willing to be pressed into service in such a situation to support the boards.

At about 40" the sections are a lot wider than normal. 
The boards are hinged so the treatment would fit into a vehicle. 

The designer chose gathered jabots for a softer look.

Appropriate pairing of fabric and treatment

The first element of a successful window treatment of any type is choosing a suitable fabric, or vice versa, choosing the right treatment for a chosen fabric.  When the designer fails to consider the appropriateness of the pairing of a treatment and a fabric, the results can range from disappointing to tortured, even if the fabric is super-high-end-awesome and the treatment is stunningly original.   Expertise in evaluating a fabric's appropriateness is acquired mostly through a great deal of exposure to fabrics and some understanding of the structure of a treatment.  Often the swatch in a sample book is insufficient for judging; sometimes not even a memo sample is enough.  When a lot of money is going to be spent on fabric, it's a good investment to order actual yardage and make a mock-up to be truly certain that the right choices are being made and that the fabric is going to perform as expected.  That mock-up can become a workroom sample, or a treatment in, say, the designer's sister's powder room, or cut up for pillows.

Here is a great example of a successful pairing of fabric and treatment: this stripe, beautifully printed on a finely woven cotton, was just made to be a Roman shade.

It pressed perfectly, folded up on the first try, and remembered its pleats without keeping creases.   The folds ripple softly and effortlessly.

Ladder shroud tape was chosen for this shade.  My newest way of using ladder shroud is to run the tape and then sew the rings over it, catching the shroud as the rings are sewn. 

A fabric stapler, one of my favorite workroom tools, secures the tape at the top.  I love the little magnetic staple remover!  We have two fabric staplers, one for each side of the room, which has saved many footsteps.

The ladder will be tucked into the hem and sewn in with the weight bar pocket stitching line, and then the bottommost row of rings will be attached.  The tape won't be awkwardly tied and knotted around the bottom ring. 

Here is a hallmark of custom work: matching thread!  For this asymmetrical stripe, five different colors of thread were used to match the stripe running along each lift line.