Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Warm Window Roman Shade

Where I live,  winter comes once a year and lasts about as long.  This year we have been spared bitter cold and storms.  Of course February is right around the corner, but no matter what, winter is just about half over and any way I look at it, that is a good thing.

We have an old farmhouse.  Quaint and bucolic, but old.  We have lovely leaded glass windows and did not believe that replacing them would benefit us enough to spend the money.  So I have been making insulated Roman Shades for the big picture windows.  We have five.

I am on my last one.

Each one has been a revision of the previous one.  This is the first one I made.  It is not wide enough to cover the whole window and would require gluing the magnet right to the woodwork.  Still it helps keep out the draft from the one hundred year old window.


The Warm company has been producing this layered insulating fabric for years. http://www.warmcompany.com/wwpage.html  When I lived in Wyoming we were too cheap to buy the real stuff.  I made some shades for our passive solar house with polyester quilt batting and plastic and fabric.  Not so satisfactory, but, the solar gain from that house was phenomenal   Wyoming winters...lots of sun. Here in the Northeast, our blue resides other than in the sky.

The Warm Window Insulating fabric is comprised of four layers:  the vapor barrier that faces the window; the batting; a foil layer that reflects heat; and a batting and foil woven layer. 

It comes in two widths(48 and 54 in) and is quilted together every four inches:
I had to piece the ww fabric to get the right dimension for our window.  You simply add the right amount by matching the seams and stitching it together.
I wanted my shade to pull all the way up so that the woodwork is exposed, so I added some muslin to the top.  This cut down on the bulk.  It was not necessary to have the insulation cover anything other than the window.
I also had to piece my decorative fabric and in so doing, something went wrong.
So now I had to trim this and piece some more.  TEDIOUS.
I would love to use the serger for this project but I am not an experienced over locker.  So instead I made the seam first with the straight stitch and then used my favorite stitch; the 3 step zig zag.

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