I’m an American designer and I live in Bali where I make 50’s vintage dress styles and wedding dresses. (www.Whirlingturban.com) I can print my own fabrics here (HOORAY!) and share the desire the common at this site to use wonderful vintage fabric. I’m really a stickler for the small details that gave vintage fabrics and garments their unique charm and magic.

I’ve finally made good a threat to print a suitable fabric and make some mid-century style draperies. (I brought my red -and turquoise and black and chartreuse- Chinese vintage curtains all the way from the U.S. here to keep me company! But I only have the one set!) Like the author of this thread, for me it was pinch pleats or nothing at all.

I found an authentic upholstery fabric design by Eames that is a one color design made from simple repeating shapes. One color designs are the type I can do here using the batik process. (Batik was used in the 50’s and, with care, one can get an authentic look with that process.) So I did my own version of this organic geometric motif and had it made into a copper stamp to use to print my curtains.

(Batik printing is done by dipping the copper stamp, which is about 8″ x 10″, into hot wax and evenly stamping the entire fabric with this repeating allover motif. You then dunk the fabric into a huge vat of dye and the parts of the fabric where the wax was do not absorb the dye. You then wash the wax out of the fabric by boiling in hot water and you have your two color or positive-and-negative motif.)

I have long been eying a handwoven fabric that is made here in Indonesia. It is a natural thick white cotton that I felt had a feeling similar to barkcloth. It’s also somewhat similar to silk dupioni, except that it is made from cotton and is much, much, much thicker. It also has a look somewhat like a woven grass wall paper. However, I had never seen this fabric batiked so I held my breath and crossed my fingers.

The result was absolutely wonderful!!!!! The feeling I am getting from this printed fabric has the subtle whimsy of some of the boomerang type reproductions without the overwhelming multicolor motifs, which I LOVE but they are so statement-making that they can dominate the room. (While ya gotta love it, you don’t always want that effect.) The ones I’ve done have cream white motifs that look somewhat like (hugely oversized) abstract jacks -as used in the children’s game- and the background is a gray that verges on the beige. You can see the motifs without them knocking you over.

I’ve made a lot of curtains for myself over the years but had never done a “real” pinch pleat. I once bought the pleater hook contraptions and used those, but the result just wasn’t as tailored as the real thing.

I considered not lining the curtains to save time; I figured they were already thick. But I didn’t want to risk my printed fabric fading out from the sun, so I decided to just “embrace the labor”. Besides, I do have help here

After reading carefully from some drapery-making books I brought here to Bali with me, I could see that there was no avoiding 1) needing a table big enough to place the entire curtain on at one time to work with it or 2) the hand stitching that was going to be required to get the perfect right angles and the mitered corners that give this genre of draperies their richness and tailored look. I read and was convinced about the need for weights in the hems at the corners and seams (where the fabric panels are joined so that the panels are wide enough). If there had been a shortcut, believe me- I would have taken it!

I do love to sew, so once I just accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to race through this project or outsmart the drapery experts at their construction methods, I got myself some big-and I do mean big- wooden panels to extend the size of my fabric cutting tables and began the zen of handstitching the curtains, linings and pinch pleats together.

It was so worth it! These are just beautiful and so authentic! I LOVE them!

-Katherine

I got vintage curtains in the living room, I just undid the pleats and sewed a hem and put them on a normal rod just straight across, they look fine and they go all the way down tot eh floor even though you don’t see it, its behind furniture

My grandmother has two walls with curtains, it was there until the day she has to move to the retirement home