Bedroom Drapes with Embroidered Blue Flowers

 

Now it's time for the drapes that go over those sheers!  The fabric is a gorgeous blue flower embroidered linen-like fabric.  There are four windows, so eight panels.  Finished length 109".  Each panel will be one fabric width wide.

Here is an overview of the fabric pattern.

 The first task is to turn up the double 6" hem and hand stitch it in place.  What made this project a little more trouble is I decided the lining should back all of the visible fabric.  Otherwise, the embroidered design could show through to the front, and we can't have that!  That means the lining tucks all the way inside the side hems - all the way to the fold - and needs to be in front of the bottom hem folds.  Since I am leaving the lining hem loose at the bottom (to prevent any stretches and pulls), I had to cut a piece of lining and tuck it inside the hem before I sewed it shut.  That is what the picture to the left shows.

 The side seams were going to present a problem because (1) the lining needs to go all the way to the fold, so I can't just match up selvages, (2) the lining has to fit inside the panel -perfectly-, without any tugs or ripples.  The method I used is a lot of trouble, but results in a beautiful lining insertion.  First, I laid my fabric face down on the table and turned in 3" and pressed.  Then tucked 1" under and pressed.  I did this on both sides.  Then I laid the lining down face up and tucked the edges down the side seams all the way in and all the way down.  (The lining was cut so it was exactly the width to fit fold-to-fold.)  I needed a way to pin the fabric and lining so that I could take the panel to the machine and stitch the lining to the main fabric at the inside (1") fold.  As the picture on the left shows (with the main fabric to the left), I put straight pins in the -lining only- about every six inches down the side, where the straight pins are exactly along the fold, but not going through it.  Then I placed a straight pin in the main fabric positioned so it crosses the vertical straight pin where it goes into the lining.

Then (and this is the worst part), I lift up the lining and place it -under- the main fabric, opening up the main fabric outside fold as shown, lining the straight pins on the lining with the inside (1") fold and matching the straight pin on the main fabric to the point the vertical pin enters the lining.  That is shown in the bottom set of pins in the picture.  Then I pull out the vertical pin and use it to attach the main fabric to the lining (center set of pins), then pull out the pin from the main fabric and use it to also attach the fabric to the lining (at the top of the picture).  I made this picture a little bigger so you could see.








Then I open up the seam fold and stitch on the fold line.








Now the lining is in, I tuck under the bottom corners at an angle and hand stitch in place.  I have not talked about the lining, but it is hemmed with a 2" double hem, just a little shorter than the finished panel length.

 For the header:  I measure the true top of the panel and mark with a pin along the width of the fabric.  Then iron on the buckram above the pins, aligning the bottom edge of the buckram with the pins.  With the buckram now on, I tuck under one inch and press, then fold the buckram over as shown on the left and hand-stitch the bottom edge of the header to the lining.

Here are the eight panels ready to pleat.  Notice that the pattern of the panels on the left do not line up perfectly as the five on the right do.  They start out the same on the other end, then gradually get out of line.  This must be a result of the embroidery process, which is done on top of the woven base fabric. I take this into account when matching panels to windows.

 These pictures illustrate marking and stitching the pleats.  On the right are stitched pleat folds.

   

 As I pinched the pleats I experimented with tacking, and decide they look cleaner when I enter the pleat from behind, make stitches back and forth, then exit to the back and fasten off.

 Here are the standard drapery pins we will use to attach the drapes to rings.  This thick embroidered fabric, together with the buckram and lining, is very stiff and difficult to pin!  It helped to use needle-nose pliers to hold the pins.








The finished drapes are shown below - finished except for being "trained" to hang correctly.  After installing them, we arranged the drapes and loosely tied them together with scrap strips of cloth.  After several days, the strips were removed but I wasn't on hand to take additional pictures!   Note:  I used screw eyes  to attach the ends of the drapes to the wall to provide a finished outside edge.

Isn't this fabric beautiful in this room?

Bedroom Sheers

This project is to make sheers and drapes for 4 bedroom windows.  In this post, I describe the sheers project.  The sheers are for tall windows in a room with a 10' ceiling.  We decided on a length of 109".  The sheers will be stationary (non-moving), with one width of fabric evenly pinch-pleated across the width of the window. 

    

 The materials included 14 yards of sheer voile fabric, about 13 yards of sheer header tape, and thread.





After measuring and measuring again, I tore the fabric for each panel about a half-inch above the desired cut and then cut a clean edge with my rotary cutter.  Before doing anything else, I also cut off the selvages to prevent that slight bit of puckering you get with sheer voile.

 The hem was to be a double 6" hem.  Voile is famously slippery and hard to work with.  To help make the hem accurate, I placed some masking tape at the 6" mark and used it as a guide to turn up the hem twice, pin and iron in place.

To secure the hem, I stitched along the top edge  very close to the fold.  It needed to be pressed one more time, stretching and holding the stitching area each time until it was cool.  I think of voile kind of like hair - after heating (with the iron) you need to hold it in place until it cools so it will retain its shape.

Below - pinning the hem, the stitched hem being pressed.

 

To attach the header, I sewed the edge of the header to the wrong side of the voile, one half inch below the top of the panel, as shown below.  Then folded the header over twice and pinned it to the panel, pressed, stitched, and pressed again.

 

 The side hems were a double 1.5" fold, pinned, stitched, and pressed.

  
 
The pleats were done in the usual way, marked, folded and stitched, then pinched and tacked at the bottom.  I felt I needed an extra tack at the top (see above) to keep the pleats from popping out.

 Here are the finished, installed sheers, hanging on sheer rods with standard drapery pins.  They are hanging with drapes that had just been installed but not yet trained!  My next blog post describes the drapes.

Pinch-pleated Valence for Breakfast Nook

Wow, I have really gotten behind on my posts!  All I can say is, you  have to make hay while the sun shines, and the sun has been shining, as you will see as I catch up my blog!

Here is a project for a pinch-pleat valence in a breakfast nook with 3 angled windows.  We decided to hang the valence fairly high and make the finished length 21".

 

The cut length of the valence is 21" + 3"*2 for hem + 4"+1" for header = 32".  The pattern is Bosporus.  After determining where I wanted the pattern to fall on the finished valence, I pulled a thread to mark the top and bottom cuts.

    

The finished with of the valence is 152", so before pleating and including the seams for the multiple widths, I needed 292" of width.  This took about 6 widths of fabric!  The repeat on this fabric is 24", so as I cut each of the widths starting in the exact same place in the pattern there was about 16" of waste between each one.  Nothing to be done about that.

Next step is to sew all the main fabric widths together and repeat the cutting and sewing widths together with the lining (below).

I chose to sew the side hems next, bringing the main fabric in 2" on the edges.  I sewed each side hem by matching the raw edges of the lining and main fabric, right sides together, and sewing a 0.5" seam allowance. Once the side seams were completed, I stretched out the fabric and lining to press the sides in so that the lining was completely flat against the fabric from end to end.  Now I turned up a double 3" hem, pinned, and hand-stitched all the way across.  Did this take time with about 12' of hem?  Yes!  Looking back, I think I could have saved some work by machine stitching the top of the hem to the lining (without showing on the front), then hand-stitching the sides, which were so short.

After the hem, I placed the bottom of the iron-on buckram exactly 21" above the bottom of the hem and ironed it in place.  Then turned down the 1" tuck allowance, then turned all that over again and pressed to result in a 21" total length.  I stitched along the bottom of the header edge to give it a neat appearance from the back.

I also at this time hand-stitched the folded edges and bottom corners so everything would lie flat.




Now for the pleats!  There will be 30.  The first step is to mark the gaps and pleat widths all along the header and check to be sure there is the correct amount of gap on each end (4").  I made a marking pattern on a piece of paper and used it to place pins at each pleat and gap.  For each pleat, I folded the valence wrong sides together, matching the beginning and ending pleat pins, and sewed down 4" through the fabric, lining, and buckram.  The picture at the right shows the panel with pleat spaces sewed and pressed.

  

To make the pinch pleats, I went through the stack and pinched each pleat into 3 folds, securing the lower edge.  On the right is the finished valence, with the fabric design falling just as I planned.

 

The valence was installed using simple pleat hooks hung over three sheer rods butted up against each other to make a continuous valence.  They look nice, I think!

Costume Alteration

Here is a small costume alteration for a character in "Smoke on the Mountain" presented by Bank Street Players.  The waist of this 1930's-era dress needed to be expanded about 5 inches.  This is tricky in a cotton dress with a form-fitting bodice like this.

The director suggested I put a zipper down the back and add fabric there, so I went with that.

The cut down the back of the dress and widening of the waist created a diamond-shaped opening (below left).  I knew the inserted fabric following this shape would emphasize the waistline.   So I inverted the diamond, making the lower part wide enough to cover the waist expansion, with the upper part emphasizing width in the upper back instead, with the triangles somewhat echoing the triangle design on the front of the dress (right).

Below you can see the original opening.  On the right, the dotted lines show the raw edges of the dress underneath the insert.

Below I have placed the insert on top of the back of the dress, then pinned and top-stitched it on.  Note the zipper was put in the insert before it was placed on the dress.  Easier that way!

The dress originally had a side zipper.  I removed the side zipper and closed the seam.

Here are the front and back of the costume, pressed and ready to go.   The insert, cut on the bias, gave just the amount of stretch needed to fit the actress and give her room to move while retaining the form-fitted look.

Valence Mock-Up

Recently a customer asked me to work with her on drapes for her new house.  She wants some pinch-pleated drapes, some with a valence only (the lower halves of these windows have shutters), and some pinch-pleated sheers to go behind existing drapes.  She sketched what she would like to see with the valences.  Here is a mock-up I made using muslin.  I taped it to a mounting board and hung it in my work room so I could make adjustments to the pattern if needed.

An interesting thing to note is the difference between the left and right swags.  See how the left swag is a little choppy, while the right swag drapes much smoother?  It is much more obvious in real life than this picture. The difference is caused by cutting on the bias vs. cutting with the fabric grain.  I made the right swag first, as it should be, cut on the bias.  When I got ready to cut the left swag, I did not have enough room to cut on the bias, so cut it with the grain.  I wanted to see the difference because some patterns for swags show cutting on the grain.  This sample is all the proof I need that cutting on the bias is essential, even though it often takes a little more fabric.

Another thing about this is interesting to me as a former math teacher.  I designed and laid out the pattern pieces using trigonometry!  Knowing what certain dimensions of the pieces had to be, I was able to determine the angles, offsets, and pattern cut-out placement using trig functions and the Pythagorean Theorem.  Math is actually useful in real life, and was created in the first place because of such needs.  I know -- blah blah blah!  :)

The final valences will be made of some yet-to-be-chosen drapery fabric, with a plain or decorative lining and cording.  For the cascades (on the sides) and jabot (in the center), I plan to use sausage bead weights in the cording to make them hang "heavy".  It should look great.   More to come on this project, I hope!