Custom Drapery Project - Roman Shade

This weekend, I worked on the sheers and the roman shade.

Anyway, with the roman shade - initially I was going to do just a flat panel, but with the window being so wide and narrow, I thought it might look really lazy that way. Besides, with the silky fabric my client picked out, I also knew that every stitch would look very pronounced on the surface. So I decided to do a "hobbled" roman shade instead.


I think it turned out really pretty! The fussiest part really was doing the calculations for where to place the rings, and then having to mark the ring placement across the entire back of the shade. This shade required nine columns of rings!

The sheers surprisingly are a little more fussy than the roman shade. When you work with sheers (or any other lightweight fabric) it can be really difficult to find the straight grain - especially when you have 14 yards pulling it out of whack. But if you want your sheers to hang straight, it is vital that you cut & stitch on the straight grain - otherwise they will look all puckered and icky.

I also seriously miscalculated the yardage required for the sheers, but the primary reason is because I didn't realize that the sheer fabric my client picked out was 106" wide, when my calculations were based on 54" wide fabric. So instead of needing to piece panels, I can make the sheers from a single 106" wide panel. Essentially, I now have twice as much fabric as I need.

In any event, finding the straight grain on a really fussy fabric such as this involves a trick I learned from making a fringed scarf. You have to locate a crosswise thread that you can pull out of the fabric that goes from one selvage edge to the other. First, I cut away a bit of the selvage and frayed the edge so I could grab a thread and pull it. It took me 5 tries to get the first one that would go all the way across. You have to be really gentle and work the thread a bit, so this takes a bit of time. Once the thread is out you just cut along the line where the thread is missing and you've found your straight grain. I also repeated this technique to cut out the two panels, and I will have to repeat it again for the sides (no, the selvage does not make a good hem unless you're doing a lazy man's swag.)

So hopefully today I can finish the sheers and the tiebacks, and maybe later this week I can at least steam shrink the fabric for the drapes.


Happy quilting!