Wide Relaxed Romans

For those who wonder about the silhouette of wide relaxed Romans with just one swoop, here are three recent examples. 

All three are about 72" wide.  The first is a sheer:

And this one is an unlined casement fabric with a linen duck 2" bottom banding:

And this is one we featured last week, interlined silk with dog-ears and 3/4" velvet banding on 3 sides:

Grosgrain Ribbon Banding

We've had a little flurry of banding lately- I've shown a few shades in recent posts with contrast fabric banding; here are two with inset banding made from grosgrain ribbon.
This pink ribbon is applied to a pretty heavy white linen, lined with Centurion napped blackout, for a little girl's bedroom.

Here is a gorgeous grey wool sateen with navy grosgrain ribbon, for a son's room.  Those "ears" on the little valance need to be tacked down with tenter hooks!

Relaxed Roman with Dog Ears

Here's a beautiful, clean, serene Relaxed Roman variation for a NYC apartment.
There is no fullness: the lift lines are set in about 8.5" to create drooping dog-ears.
Translucent interlined white silk is banded with 3/4" of yellow velvet.
This shade is about 70" wide, in case you're wondering about proportion.

To keep the layers from shifting, first I hand-basted the velvet to the 3 layers before machine sewing.

After sewing with a scant 3/4" seam, I rolled the velvet over and hand-sewed it to the back.

In a Purple Haze

I've noticed that purple is a popular decorating color in the winter.  February's birthstone is amethyst, which perhaps reflects an increased attraction to purple when it is cold and dull outside- it sure does pep up a subdued palate.  Still, it was surprising to have SO MUCH purple in-house this winter.
On February 4 I took this picture of purple fabrics that came in for immediate projects. 

These purples were mostly paired with natural, sage or loden, or silver-grey.

The project that kicked off purple month was a simple purple burnout velvet panel, box-pleated onto a board, with purple glass beads shown off when the fabric is draped back to one side.

Next were pillows in silver and purple, balanced with a hint of loden in the outlining:

Then a 165" valance and panels of a gold-dusted natural silk, color-blocked with silver-grey and purple satin.  These did not photograph well, but in the house they are fabulous. 

Four neo-bohemian shades were exuberant with their purple borders trimmed with purple and sage glass beads:

The Sheffield Queen lined what felt like a couple of miles of valances with purple, trimmed with purple fringe: 

Here the sage and purple face fabric stretches across the workroom into infinity, or at least it felt that long:

And for the last purple project of the month: just-the-other-side-of-periwinkle-purple bands and welts the sage and purple toile on this goblet pleat valance:

Tres-Super-Chic

In a master bedroom inspired by menswear: cornices and draperies, with a variation on a Greek key trim, and nailheads all around the cornices.  The draperies have been tied to train the pleats, so good photos later- like, in a couple of weeks.  Meanwhile:

More Pillows

Might as well show off some more pillows.  We had a marathon this past week!

This order consisted of 13 pillows- various sizes out of these 5 fabrics.

We combined this order with another dozen or so pillows to cut out and sew by color so we could minimize re-threading the machine.

The most fun part of making a big batch of pillows is rummaging through the zipper bin and picking out the right color zipper for each fabric.  I guess I keep about 35 colors in stock, but sometimes I have to go to a local fabric store for a special color, like the bright orange in the bottom left corner.  Invisible zipper tape didn't come in that orange, so I got regular zippers and did a lapped zipper closure.  I couldn't even remember how to do it!- but after 3 of them it all came back.

I love microcord!

These pillow fabrics are delicious- two of the best of the high-end beauties we've had in lately. 

The blue lotus velvet came all the way from New Zealand.

The silver fabric is no ordinary reptile- it's DRAGON.  I want to know, how do they know what dragon skin actually looks like? 

Microcord defines the pillows unobtrusively.  The blue-green welt is faux-silk, the grey welt is satin.  The cord is just 4/32" in diameter. 

Rule of thumb: match zipper tape to welting- subject to exceptions, of course.   And use invisible zipper whenever possible.