Training Drapes

Or perhaps the title could be...

The week I went to war with my drapes

I am happy to report that I have won the battle.  The drapes have been tied up and are setting up neatly as we speak!

 

Yes, I am fully aware this post reveals my craziness.  In many ways.

I'll start at the beginning...
20ish months ago I bought the fabric and lining for these drapes.  I planned to sew them but little man was born and my sweet mother-in-law offered to sew them for me.  She did a perfect job sewing and hanging them.  The problem was that I did not train them well enough after the fact.

Training drapes is the act of working with the drapes to teach them fall/hang uniformly as well as pleat/fold in a way that looks tailored and is spaced evenly across the width of the panel.  High end drapes are trained and it is one of the reasons they look different... look professional.

So, after the last year of my drapes hanging as they may (which I thought I would be fine with) they trained unevenly and developed a flare-out on the ends that exposed the lining (which I was not fine with).

By letting the drapes just hang they self-trained.  As evidenced by this drapery panel... you can see the folds that naturally set in place.  The difference with trained drapes is that you intentionally set the presses where you want so that they will fold uniformly and fall straight down.

To train my drapes, I took them down and laid them flat for a week to let the folds fall out.  I could have taken them to be dry cleaned instead but opted for an investment of time instead of money :) 

 

After a week I evenly spaced out the hooks across each panel, re-hung the curtains and then worked with my hands to accordion fold each panel before tying them in place.  I started in the middle of the length of the panel (since it was the least trained/easiest to re-train) then worked down, and finally worked up.  The hardest areas to re-train was the last foot or two at the bottom of each panel. I will leave the ties in place for a week to set the new train.

Additionally, I readjusted the clasps/rings so that there is one extra ring on each end of the panel.  The extra clasp will fold the panel in (to avoid flare-outs).

 

Finally, I adjusted the clasps on the fabric a centimeter here and there to ensure they were placed in the center of the back of each fold to hold the inverted fold in place and carry the weight firmly down the center of the newly trained fold.

I learned a lot about training from basic google searches.  I liked the post on House of Fifty about training drapes since I felt a little neurotic in this endeavor and it seemed to reassure me that this is a normal process. : )

 

Bottom line: to the normal eye, it may not have been obvious. But to me, I had invested some pretty pennies in this fabric and I knew what they could look like if they were trained. So, I decided to train them. It required a lot of patience to re-work them, and some time (ok, a lot of time). But, it should be worth it!!

 

Lesson learned, train drapes the day you hang them.  Invest about 15 minutes per panel instead of the hour or so it took me : (