Fabrics just want to have fun. You know, they want to drape and swoop, swish and sashay, and look smashing. That's why Austrian shades will never go out of style, like swags: they allow fabric to look and perform at its absolute best.
So I thought I'd show off my latest Austrian shade, for
Crosstown Shade and Glass, letting its fabulousness detract from the fact that this is my first blog post in a month (I'm sorry!).
While sheer fabrics swoop languidly, dupioni silk drapes in a delicious, crunchy way. This shade is unlined, so we allowed more than triple fullness vertically. The shade needed two cuts of 54" fabric. We folded and pressed along the separate swoop lines to provide a stitching guide for the tapes.
We prepared the two cuts, sewed three rows of tape onto each, then joined the widths in the center and sewed the final tape.
The sides were folded with a single hem and the tapes sewed over the raw edges.
In the old days, I would tie the tape strings to a post in order to shirr them up. For this shade, I got to use my new
Drawmatic clamp bar to secure the bottom of the shade, one clamp at each tape.
I began shirring the shade down the table.
The printed grid table canvas allowed me to keep track of the length.
With the bottom securely clamped, it was easy to ensure that all the columns were shirred equally.
I use safety pins at every third ring as visual guides to check that the swags are distributed equally. Once the shade is dressed, the pins are removed.
The rod pocket style is an unusual- perhaps old-fashioned- but effective way to manage the horizontal fullness.
This was fun to tackle this unwieldly project in the new, more spacious workroom!
I hope to have many more Austrian shades in my future.
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