Details on the 158" shade

There's a lot of detail I'd like to share about the 158" shade featured in last Friday's post.

The fabric was railroaded- it wasn't perfectly symmetrical in both directions, but nearly, and the repeat was small in either case, so I thought it would be best to have no visible seams.  Instead, we seamed it horizontally and hid the seam under a fold.  Figuring out the logistics was trickier than I thought it would be!  Luckily I got it right, whew.  The repeat is just 4.5" so the folds are a little smaller and closer together than I usually plot for hobbled shades.

I did catch a break on marking the fabric for sewing the tape and rings.  I used a lovely double-wide cotton sateen from Hanes, and could just see through it enough to make the marks by pattern instead of having to measure.  THAT was a huge plus- it not only saved time, but also assured accuracy.  I took this photo of the first shade as pattern placement reference for the following two.

The Rollease Skyline clutch on a 1.5" tube provided a strong lift system.  After using this tube a lot recently for both clutch AND spring lift systems, I think I will now remember without having to look it up: screw eyes for clutch, NO screw eyes for spring.

Another thing I think I finally will remember without having to look it up: for reverse mount hobbled shades, DO NOT put the grommet through the tape!  I had to wiggle the tape free out of every grommet in order to make slight adjustments to the board line.  I also finally got smart while making the adjustments and instead of unstapling, I used a blunt instrument to nudge a bit of lining upward and stapled it to the back of the board.

Did you see what tool I'm using there?  It's our new Milwaukee cordless, battery-operated staple gun!  My hands are no longer able to operate an old-fashioned manual staple gun, and the shade was too far away for the compressor hose, so this new toy I mean tool came in very handy!

The tube, at 158", was too long to safely use without support.  Luckily Rollease has introduced a splice- the Easy-Link.  This allows the tube to be split in half and spliced, with the splice doing double duty as a support bracket.

For a fail-safe during transportation, we used cable tie mounts at each end of each tube, just in case the tube came out of the bracket.  It can't fall far, because it's all strung up to the shade, but it saved some annoyance when it DID happen and we needed to put it back together.  Please note: we snipped the cable ties loose once the shade was installed, because they would add resistance to the lift if they stayed in place.
There are two types of cable tie mounts: one is all in one piece; the other sticks on then you secure it with a screw- that's the one we wound up using.

Oh, and another thing.  If you read the previous post, you might remember that the soft cornices didn't quite fit in the corner, and I had to take them back to adjust the ends.  I made a piece of welting on "wings" with velcro, and velcroed it in between where the new ends met.  I forgot to take a photo of the welt with wings, sorry.

I wish I could say that the pattern flowed around the corner because of meticulous planning, but really it was serendipity that the pattern on the two ends created a near match.  Sometimes luck is better than skill!

It WAS skill, however, and not a bit of luck involved, that the pattern matched preciselty from the soft cornice to the shade!  And I'll gladly take full credit for THAT, as well as the perfect pleat-to-pattern :)