Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Tufted Lace

Love it or hate it lace is back in the limelight. Lace is a most delicate of materials, often handmade, it has been in use for hundreds of years.
The Mystery House has several guest rooms, the sunniest and brightest being in the Northwest corner of the top floor. The room itself has a somber khaki colour on the walls with a thick layer of buttery cream spread happily over the wainscoting and trimming. The two colours go very well in the room along with the very bright and cheery linens we selected for the curtains (soon to be on display). To add a little freshness and a bit of fun I picked a lace for all the roman sheer shades a cream colour lace with a Victorian pattern. Originally I had planned to make the shades flat, to really showcase the lace and to function simply as a privacy screen BUT... anyone who knows me knows that if it's anything I am really good at it's taking a simple idea and turning it into an obscene amount of work. In the case of the lace screens I thought it might be a nice idea to try to "tuft" them. Can you imagine that... tufted lace curtains....? No of course not... me neither.
 In the end it was a combination of cutting, tucking, sewing, screwing up, re-ordering new material, remaking, re cutting, re tucking, re screwing up and finally... voila! they were hanging and they were AMAZING! This was a combination of mine and Anna's brains stuck together in a Vulcan mindmeld with the result being these utterly phenomenally awesomely delicious lace curtains with a very obvious yet subtle tufted appearance. :)


Above you can see the shades as they hang in the window. We cut the lace at the hem and made a matching valance above that corresponds with the pattern. Notice just how subtle and simple these seem, yet upon closer inspection it becomes obvious to anyone with an eye for detail and quality that these have a lot of thought and planning behind them.


Above you can clearly see the tufted effect on the lace, we matched the tufting to the pattern. Damn we are so good at what we do!


The Window seat area, again the pattern and texture is very obvious here, the slight pillowing of the tufting creates a soft even pattern. 
These hand made shades as simple as they look, and for a guest room nonetheless, are a perfect example of our level of detail and the lengths to which we go to create beautiful lasting curtains for our clients.