Topping off the Roman Shade

We use toppers for Roman shades under a variety of circumstances, from utilitarian to aesthetic.
Crosstown Shade and Glass requested reverse mount for these shades: the shade falls off the back of the mounting board, allowing the bead chain loop to hang conveniently in front of the inside-mounted shades.  A topper hides the mechanism, and the grommets that route the lift cords to the front of the shade for rigging.

There plenty of methods for making toppers.  In this case, we wrapped 1/4" hobby wood with blackout fabric and interlining before covering it with the face fabric, so these toppers are thin but rigid, and slightly padded.

The wood doesn't come in the size we needed, so we pieced it together.  This topper had to be about 7-8" long in order to hide the grommets that route the lift cords from the back of the shade to the front, where the reverse-mounted lift system is located.

During preparation, double-sided adhesive tape secured the linings.

The shade is rigged and strung before the topper is made, because, for one reason, once it's on, the shade is hard to hang for testing.  We used the Rollease traversing clutch- an industry tried-and-true- because it offers the most versatility.  The bead chain loop was specified to hang 2" in from the end, and with some other systems this would push the outermost columns 5-5.5" in from the edge- too far, in our opinion.  The outer columns on these shades are about 3" in from the edge, and ribs in the folds keep the sides from drooping.  In case you're wondering, these shades are blackout, made with our own no-pinholes-of-light fabrication technique.

Another reason for making the topper after the shade is mounted is so we can be sure we match the pattern to the shade body.  The third reason is to be sure the topper is long enough to hide the grommets.  Sometimes in the workroom we will raise the shade up to the height of the window to double-check what that length should be. 
The topper is nail-gunned to the board face, then the fabric wrapped to the top of the board.

I am pretty thrilled with the pattern match!  And, of course, I love the pleat-to-pattern of the folds :)  Are we tired of that yet?!?

Fine Cotton-Linen Sheer Roman Shades

As promised- here are the beautiful sheer cotton-linen shades made for Crosstown Shade and Glass.  The fabrics, from Flat Vernacular, were provided by the homeowner, who wished us to feature specific areas of these asymmetrical prints.

I started by laying the fabrics out on the table and looking down on it from a stepladder to get a good picture of the design and how best to cut it......

,,,,,guided, as mentioned, by the homeowner's notes.

These shades were lined with super-sheer voile, to keep the ethereal glow of the prints.  Voile seems delicate but is actually quite tough, and with my ring-sewing method, the stress of the stitch is borne by the voile, relieving the stress on the face fabric.

For one side hem the selvedge was used in order to keep as much of the saturated area as possible.

It was fun to scrounge through my extensive thread collection to find the right colors to use in different areas of the pattern.  Yeah, I said fun. 

I don't know if there's a name for this knot.  Because of the sheer lining, I used this method to be sure the knot would never pull through the fabric.  After taking the stitch, but before pulling it tight, slip the needle through the loop below the knot....

.....and gently pull it snug.  Now the knot cannot slip through the fabric.  After this step the ring is sewn, taking stitches only in the voile.

The pink shade had a lot of colors so I used even more threads- all different types, chosen on the basis of color.

 The top of each shade was basted at the board line before moving the shade from the table, and trimmed to the board size.  This step prevents any shifting of layers while transferring the shade off the table.

The resulting shades were just as beautiful as I had imagined they'd be.

 The light really affected the look of the pink shade once it was in the window.

 

This is inevitable with a sheer lining and a deeply saturated print, something to keep in mind when working under these circumstances.

These shades were a total success and one of the most satisfying projects of the year.

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Not ghosting!

It has come to my attention that I have not posted for over 2 months!  People are starting to check up on me.  Yes, I'm fine and I'm definitely not planning on ghosting you!

It has been a busy time with work, family, and planning a complicated class for CWC-19.
But also, I do a fair amount of work that I cannot post here or online anywhere, and when I'm in the midst of that, I get out of the habit of organizing my thoughts on what I normally do write about. 
Watermarking the images I post is a fairly tedious process, and we've all hear awful stories about stolen photos, so I'm careful about protecting not only myself but also my designer and the end client.  Often lately I haven't have time to sort and watermark images, so the story must wait.  Busy is a good thing, though!

The CWC class I'll be teaching with my friend Jennifer White covers roman shade lift systems, and I've been learning so much.  Interestingly, I had some actual orders requesting some of the systems that we needed to learn about, which meant I got to learn and then get immediate reinforcement!  As I start catching up on posting here on the blog, some of those projects will make an appearance.

Meanwhile, I've tried to be diligent about doing quick posts on my Facebook page, and my newly created (and nearly immediately neglected) Instagram account.  But those are visual platforms, and not good outlets for the kind of fabrication reporting that I like to do here on the blog.  This remains my favorite place!

During this unintended hiatus, I've gotten a lot of emails from readers who have sent photos of projects they've done based on techniques they've learned from this space, and that makes me happier than you could imagine.  I'm thrilled that my ramblings here have been helpful to new workrooms who are learning the business, or DIYers decorating their own homes, or seasoned pros just looking for inspiration for a new method.

Thanks to you who have been concerned and have checked up on me!  That is the sweetest thing of all.
Stay tuned- this station has not gone dark!

Here's one of the beauties we completed recently- this is a cotton-linen-blend sheer by Flat Vernacular- a dream to work on!  Story to follow.

Fortuny panels, installed!

If there had been a DJ in the house, we'd have cued up Etta James and sung along to "At Last."  These stunning draperies were a long time in the making!

Designer Chrissy Glenn envisioned the Fortuny pattern with banding of the same fabric in a contrasting colorway, on the lead edges, and bottom.  Of course that meant accomplishing a perfect pattern match- in both directions.

Gold rope cording from Samuel and Sons defined the edges.

The project began with a day of assessment, layout, marking, rolling, re-rolling, more marking, and re-assessment.  The bittersweet colorway was discontinued, so what we had in-house was all there was on the planet- and we had just- and I mean JUST- enough.

It was truly exciting to see the plan develop.

Finalization of the plan called for celebration!

Cutting required a full day of calm, quiet, complete isolation, and a generous dose of chutzpah.  It was scary.  Quilters will recognize the term "fussy cutting" and this was fussy cutting to the extreme.

I knew that I could not manage perfect pattern matching with any ad-lib effort, so I used a double-sided adhesive tape to align the pattern.  I like to use Rowley's tape for this purpose, because it can be removed easily.  After pressing the edge to create a sharp, visible sewing line, I applied the tape in order to secure the layers perfectly.

The sharp crease provided a clear(-ish) stitching line.

The tape was removed right after the sewing was done, before trimming away the excess.

It is a testament to the high quality of Fortuny prints that the pattern aligned so easily.  In both directions there were few adjustments to be made.  This fabric isn't expensive for no reason!

The turquoise was intended to have a high translucence, so the panels were interlined with a light but dense cotton flannel, and lined with a tightly woven lightweight doublewide (seamless) cotton.
But first, we wanted to add a light-filtering layer to the bittersweet band, pressing the seams toward that side, to eliminate any shadow of the seam allowance. 

Grey cotton sateen was used to reduce but not eliminate light bleed. 

This grey was interlocked by hand with a herringbone stitch on all sides of both lead edge and bottom bands.

 

Once all twelve panels had been prepared, we began the process of assembling the layers.  Here is where I have no photos- I guess at the time I thought pictures of plain white linings were too boring!  We interlocked the interlining to the seams as usual, but also to the lead edges, since no lining layers were going to be rolled into the hem.  They were interlocked right over the grey lining, if you can imagine that from this photo.

After assembly, the last step was to pleat and tack.  Chrissy chose a two-finger top tack, tacked around the fronts of the pleats with coordinating thread.

I'll be going back to the house in the near future, and hope to take great photos then.  On installation day we didn't have time to steam, dress, and stage the photos since the family was leaving for the weekend.  However, even though they couldn't sleep in the room that night, they were pretty thrilled at having these to come home to!

Lots of love and gratitude to my support posse, Camille, Jen, and Rosemarie.  Their work, encouragement, and advice made this project happen!  And a huge shout-out to Penny from whom I learned techniques I'd never dreamed of that are now part of my daily work life.

How to contact me if comments don't work

Hey- once again, the blog is having trouble with comments; sometimes I can't get them to be published; and when they are published I am nearly always unable to reply to them.
Please, if you don't see your comment or my reply, just email me at stitchlore@gmail.com and I'll get back to you.
Sorry about this problem!

A pleat-to-pattern natural

Pleat to pattern, pleat to pattern, are we tired yet of pleat to pattern?  UMMMM...... NO!

At least not on this project for Crosstown Shade and Glass.

Pleat to pattern just keeps getting more fun.  This applique stripe is such a cool fabric, OF COURSE it had to be pleated to pattern.

The homeowner's original idea was ripplefold draperies with this fabric.  I made mockups to help the client and designer choose how to best show off this pattern and address the practical issues.

With ripplefold, half the fabric goes to the front, half to the back, just like grommet draperies.  A workroom sample like this helps everyone visualize the effect.

I did a mockup with buckram on a string to simulate the profile. 

We also made a mockup of inverted pleats, so the client could compare styles.  This creates a wave effect, which visually is very similar to ripplefold, except instead of a backward-projecting ripple, that fabric is pleated to the back and stitched down flat.

Guess what, inverted pleats were the choice.

The pleats are sewn to the back, instead of to the front as they are with pinch pleats. 

Since these draperies were unlined, we French seamed the widths together, so there were no raw or serged edges.

The pleats were flattened out and "stitched in the ditch" on the front.

The pleats lie flat, but once they're hung on a rod, the flat part rolls forward like a wave.

Everybody was happy with this project!