Covering the lip of a rope welt

  

   After we have hot glued rope welt to the edge of the cornice we need to cover the exposed lip of the cord.  The easiest no-sew way to do this is to make a sharp crease in the fabric by pressing it together with our fingers using 3/4″ Millennium tape.

Matching those pesky stripes

   Every once in a while someone will give me a workroom tip that saves a lot of frustration and results in a much nicer finished product.  This suggestion came from Catherine who managed one of the Calico Corners stores and her suggestion involves matching horizontal stripes on a cornice board .  Even with a walking foot sewing machine it is sometimes difficult to match all the horizontal stripes without tearing the seam apart over and over again.  The matching is not so critical on soft treatments like valances and drapes because of the folds in the fabric.  But on a cornice board the fabric is stretched tight and shows every imperfect match.

   We begin by pressing down about an inch and a half of the edge of the fabric to a place where the matching would give the most pleasing appearance.   Today’s fabric is a little difficult because of the bulky threads that make up the stripes.  So after pressing we lay a piece of masking tape to within a quarter inch of where we will sew.  Next we match the two pieces of fabric and begin sewing as close to the edge as possible (perhaps less than 1/16th inch).  As we work our way down the seam we can make very small adjustments at each stripe to make sure they match.   Pull off the masking tape before applying the fabric over the batting on the cornice board.

Let’s make a mock roman shade cornice board

    To make a mock roman shade cornice board with matching pattern we first staple batting to the plywood box and cover the batting with muslin.  On this board which is 8 1/4″ high we want three folds so mark the muslin with lines 2 3/4″ apart.  Now let’s lay out the fabric loosely to see which part of the  pattern we want centered and begin by laying out the center fold.  Now we will lay out the top and bottom folds to match the pattern of the center fold and start cutting the fabric.   After the pieces are cut we try Millennium tape to see if it will stick and it won’t (probably a teflon coating on this fabric) so we use fringe adhesive to glue the folded fabric together.  This will keep the fold perfectly straight when it is applied to the cornice board. 

    We first apply the piece of fabric that will wrap around the bottom edge and then  the three folds making sure they are each 2 3/4″  and the pattern of each fold matches above and below.   The folds are wrapped around the inside of the returns and a lining fabric is attached using cardboard tack strip and staples.  Now stand it up on its bottom edge to make sure the folds hang evenly and we are finished.