Wednesday . . . Where was I?

I haven't made it to the cave today because I had to work at my (real) job.  I wanted to do WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced   Its on my list.  The linking to all the weekly things.  So, instead here's something I made last year and I'm pretty proud of it.

(Nice boat next door; those would be the Joneses . . .)

I made this 17.5' roman shade.  Actually, I made two.  There are 17.5' of windows on the other side of the main salon as well.  It was a bit of work to make these.

Sorry about the shadows (what am I saying? we get shadows because there is sunshine!)  This is the flybridge (the top part of the boat where the steering is) with all the furniture shoved to the sides so the big shade can be laid out and its battens attached.  Lots of measuring, trying to keep it straight.  Magazines holding the battens down while the glue dries.

What kind of magazines are read here? 

Here is the whole shade (one of them) with its battens all glued down.  This waited overnight and then was strung and hung in the salon.

This is a video that shows the shades going up and down - do videos show up on blogger?  Well, I guess we'll see:

Probably it won't video.  Well, this is the perspective from the front of the salon, looking aft.  The video shows the shade going up and down, all 17.5 feet with one pulley.  Its so great to have.  Nice to be able to get privacy from the neighbors; nice to block the sometimes too much sun.

I used all the instructions from Terrell's Roman Shades website.  She has a wonderful process.  I made a small shade first, as a tester:

Well, that's kind of dark, but this is the one I made to test the process.  Terrell has all of the hardware and calculations.  I used Bella Choma.  It was kind of a pain because we wanted the "stripes" to be vertical as we have way too much horizontal to the boat.  But the stripes begin and end with yellow on each selvage, so I had to cut and seam them precisely to get the shade to look like it was all of a piece.

It was quite a bit of work to make these.  They are so functional.  And lined.  I did make a mistake (well, probably more than one).  The lines to raise the shade (there are twelve of them) are secured to each shade with 96 little plastic rings . . . all sewn on by hand . . . after the shade is installed.  I didn't want the sewing of the rings to show, so I used monofilament thread thinking that would save me from having to switch between white, gray and yellow thread.  Well, the monofilament doesn't hold a knot very well and many of the rings came undone!  So I have had to re-sew 192 rings.  As if hand sewing 192 rings by hand once wasn't enough. 

I think I'll move this post to a tab (when I get to having tabs) about boat sewing specifically.

Thanks for stopping by!

Holli