Shall We Dance?

Don't you just love the the "talk when you walk" sound that taffeta makes when you wear it?

Taffeta reminds me of a time when glamour reined supreme and girls loved to dress up and not be afraid to be "girly girls". I still love to dress up and in fact designed the sapphire blue taffeta dress that I recently wore to my brother-in-laws wedding.

It only made sense when I redecorated my dining room that I should make taffeta draperies to get that glamous look that I love.

I have made most of the draperies in our home and taught myself how to do triple pinch pleats, but recently saw inverted box pleats in a decorating magazine and just loved them.

So using the picture as my guide I decided to take a stab at them.

To cover my window I required 3 times the width of the window so I had nearly 12 metres of fabric to work with ... wow are my shoulders and back ever sore after this project. I decided I wanted them to puddle on the floor so made them 8 inches longer than the floor to ceiling measurement. As well, I lined them, so each drape was really heavy and kept sliding off my table when I was trying to sew them. Consequently I ended up doing most of the work by hand stitching ... it was easier than fighting to keep the fabric on the table.

I am thrilled with the results. They are just what I wanted in the dining room, the milk chocolate colour blends very nicely with the Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue that I painted the dining room and the inverted box pleat really hangs beautifully.

They look like ballgowns hanging in my window.

From now on only inverted box pleats ... no more pinch pleats for this girly girl.