How NOT To Hang Draperies

Welcome to another Window Wednesday!  Last week we talked about where to hang your draperies, and this week I wanted to share a story about how to hang draperies.  Or rather, how NOT to hang draperies.

Be sure to check out our Decorating With Window Treatments page for more ideas, tips and techniques for your windows!

This story starts 15 years ago.  My mom had just moved into a new home, and my sisters and I decided to buy some ready-made drapery panels for her living room.  The sheers that were on the windows were in pretty good shape, so we only replaced the panels.  We also kept the decorative double traverse rods that the sheers and original panels were hanging from.  I did not have a drapery/sewing business yet, that was a couple of years down the road.  So, not having a clue about what we were doing, we hung the new draperies wrong.  Very wrong.

Do you see our mistake?   I’m sure my drapery friends are going to spot it right away.  Here’s a close up of one of the panels.

We hung the draperies so that they are covering the rings and pole.  You can see in the picture above that the sheers are hanging very nicely below the rings, while the drapery panels are not.  You would think we would have had a clue about where to hang the panels just by looking at how the sheers were hung.  Duh!

That’s not even the most embarrassing part of this story.  The worst part is that I have had a drapery business for 13 years, and I have just now fixed the panels for my mom!  I’m not even sure when I first noticed that they were hung wrong, but it has been a LONG time.  Every time I would see them, which is pretty often, I would remind myself to do something about them.  Then I would forget again.  It wasn’t until my mom asked me to give a talk about my drapery business to her ladies group, that I got really motivated to fix the panels.  See, the meeting is going to be in my mom’s living room.  It would be very embarrassing to give a talk about draperies in the very room where you have messed up your mom’s draperies!

OK, enough beating myself up about not being a good daughter, so what did I do to fix the panels?  It was a pretty easy fix, I just changed the pin setting, and re-hemmed them.

Originally the drapery pins were put in at 1 3/4″ from the top edge of the drapery panels.  This pin setting is fine if you are hanging panels on a regular white traverse rod, but when using a decorative traversing rod the pins need to be set at 1/4″.  This way the panels will hang below the rings instead of covering them up.  Because I changed the pins, I needed to shorten the panels too.

Here’s how they look now.  So much better!

Here’s a close-up of one of the panels.

The pleats are hanging so much nicer now that they aren’t fighting with the rings and pole.  Again, my drapery friends are probably going to notice another problem with the panels.  See the flat place next to the last pleat on the left?  That’s called the return, and it should be going back to the wall, but because these are ready-made panels, the return is not big enough and the panels are not wide enough for it to go back to the wall.  Again, we were pretty clueless when we ordered the panels.

Do you have an embarrassing window treatment story?  I would love to hear it!

 

Between Naps On The Porch