window mistreatments: the conclusion.

well, i promised you a post about my window mistreatments, and here it is :)

to bring you up to speed on the mistreatment journey, i got the inspiration for the windows when i saw the fabric... then i tried draping it and had a mistreatment mishap. it became apparent that i needed to cut the fabric, but in the process, ended up with a nice, no-sew edge :)

so now here i am, with the fabric... two nearly identical pieces of fabric, with a lovely edge, ready to try it out! because i love the swirl of the fabric so much, i opted to try and hang the fabric so that the pattern really stood out... i didn't want to bunch it or gather it so that the swirls were obscured.

i used an inverted pleat and some straight pins to get the effect i wanted.

this is just one of the pieces. [don't you just love the swirls?! i know i do!]

then i propped the fabric up on the hardware of the blinds to see what i would end up with...

it's still too long, right?? [but i love, love, love the inverted pleating!]

so i had to figure out what to do... i didn't want to cut the fabric any more, so i just un-pinned it, folded it in half length-wise and re-folded and re-pinned it so that i still had the inverted pleats.

also, did you notice the glue gun above?? here's my big secret... i kept the selvage on the top edge so that i could glue the fabric to the top of the metal track that the blinds are on.

here's my reasoning...

#1. the front edge of the metal hardware that the blinds are hung from sits a good 5 inches from the wall. so, originally i was going to use the nester's method of folding and tacking the fabric into the wall with upholstery tacks... but the fabric just doesn't drape nicely when it needs to come over that huge obstacle.

#2. have i mentioned that i'm cheap?? i don't mind investing in a lovely piece of fabric that i can repurpose in a new home [because we'll likely be moving in 8 months] and i really didn't want to have to invest in a curtain rod... i'm also lazy, and buying a curtain rod would mean making a rod pocket, which may also mean bunching the fabric... it's an if you give a mouse a cookie situation, really.

#3. it's ok. i tried it... i cut off a bit of the selvage and hot glued it to an inconspicuous spot on the metal hardware [btw... is there a name for this?? i feel like there should be!] and let it sit... and then tried to take it off. it wasn't exactly easy peasy to get it off... the glue kept a bit of the fabric when i pulled the fabric off (i guess you might say the fabric was threadbare when i pulled it off), but the glue was fairly easy to get off the metal, once i pulled the fabric off the glue. enter the selvage... gluing the selvage means that it doesn't matter if i have to rip or cut the fabric a little where it's glued, because it's just the selvage anyway!! brilliant, isn't it?!

so with my glue gun in hand, i scaled the couch (remember, i'm only 5ft tall), and immediately had difficulty. i had straight pins holding the pleats in place, i'm balancing on the back of the couch, with a hot glue gun in one hand, trying to arrange the porcupine-like fabric with the other.

i knew i needed about 2 or 3 extra hands to hold the fabric in place so that i glued it right.

my brilliant husband handed me his thick theology texts (he'd taped the covers together so that they would be more box-like), to use as weights to hold the fabric in place. *genius*

i also used them to hold the fabric in place after i'd glued, so that the glue could dry well.

would you just look at that inverted pleat? gorgeous.

all the above photos were taken the night before i went on vacation, because i had wanted this to be done before i went. unfortunately, because the only photos i had were taken at night, i had to wait until i came back from vacation so i could get some lovely, naturally lit ones for you...


i love it :) it's the pop of excitement and cheerfulness that that wall needed! :) i feel like it grounds the white sofa too! and now my sweet little throw pillow isn't the only one holding the white/green color scheme together! :)

and i love that you can see that lacey, lovely swirl pattern! :) way to go, inverted pleats!!

there's a bunch of imperfections... like if you look closely, you can see that the first and third pleats aren't exactly spaced the same distance from their respective ends...

and here are a few detail shots (and a few little imperfections)...

that may or may not be a thread hanging... and that pleating is even.... i swear...

this is the middle pleat, where the two pieces of fabric come together... and you can only tell from the undercarriage shot that the pleats aren't connected :) so i suppose the only way you'd see it was if you were sitting in the middle of my couch and had a flip-top head, like the cartoon character in the Reach Toothbrush commercials... probably not going to invite him over, just in case...

i'm a happy woman :)

and i'll be linking to my usual parties... for a complete list of all the parties i link to, click here.