Lay your tempo tape up along the top edge of your drapery panel with the draw pockets closest to the top edge of the tape and your shearing part of the tape, this thick piece here will be the bottom roll of the tape. Now you want to center this on to your panel and the way you’ll do that is you’re going to find the part of your tape that has these three little loops of thread here. And also if you look closely, you’ll see a little square for stitching, little dots if you will and that’s where you want to center from. And what I mean is you want to measure over from the side edge of your panel to this square dot here in the middle of these three loops of thread and you want that to be even on both sides of your panel.
So if I were to measure over and come up with about two inches here is with the same measurement on the other side of my panel. So I’m going to pull this back and forth until my tape is balanced on both sides and then I’ll show you how to sew this to your drapery panel. I’ve now centered my tape on to my drapery panel. From the side edge over to this little square dot is to read a quarter inches on this side and it’s also three and quarter inches on the other of my drapery panel. So my tape is now centered.
Next I’m going to fold down the top edge of my panel about a half an inch and what I like to do is measure form the bottom of my panel up to the desired finished length of my drapery panel and then fold down. So that maybe an inch for you, half inch, something like that. And you’ll go ahead and fold this down so that the top edge of your tape is about an 8th of an inch from the folded edge, fairly close to the folded edge. So it looks just about like that. And when you are folding in place and you can go ahead and use some pins to secure the tape in place.
Once you have the tape in that place and you fold it down, the tope edge of your panel, you’re going to secure the cords on one end of your tape and in this case I’m going to start with this side over here. It doesn’t really matter which side. And you’re going to pull up the cords from the center loop, a thread here where that square dot is right here and you’re going to pull this up. So I’m just going to use my fingers here and just pull this cord loose and then knot this cord so that it does not slide out a place when the cords are pulled later on.
If you’re worried that it’s going to fall out of place, double knot it make the knot fairly thick and if you’re really worried about it you could also take your machine and stitch just behind the knot. But the knot should do well. And I would do the same thing on the bottom loop here. But sometimes it might feel like it’s not going to give but it’s because it’s stitched in there so well, but it will pull loose when you go. And then knot this one as well. And now you have your pull cords secured on one end of your tape. You won‘t do this on the other end of your tape, just this one here, okay? Then for the rest of this tape here, you’re going to fold this under so that it’s about a quarter to half an inch from the edge of the drapery panel and you can pin that in place as well.
Okay, so I’m going to continue folding down my tope edge and pinning my tape in place and then I’ll show you what to do with the other edge of your pulling tape before we begin sewing. On the other end of my tape, I have some extra here which you probably will as well and I’m going to go ahead and trim my tape to about the edge of my drapery panel. And then you’ll also see the same type of three loose cords that you saw on the other side and you’re going to pull those cords loose just as you did on the other end of the tape. So now these are loose, but you’re not going to knot them because this is the end that you will pull to pleat the tape later. So again, you’ll fold under this cut edge of your tape and because you’re on the loose end of the tape you’re going to fold this end of the tape over more, more like an inch in from the side of your drapery panel.
The reason is when you go to sew this you’re going to sew from the knotted end across over this way to the loose end and when you do that sometimes the tape gets pushed over. So you don’t want to have the tape too close to this edge if the fabric and tape caves so this will help prevent having any problems like that. So go ahead and fold this under so it’s about an inch from the end of your panel and then pin this in place. And now it’s time to sew your tape to your drapery panel. I want to move this back over here so you can look at the knotted end. This is where we tie the knots of the cord and you’re going to sew along the top edge of your tape, be sure not to sew over your pockets themselves. So above the pockets, there is a space there, you’ll sew across the top edge of your tape and you will sew across the bottom edge of your tape here.
Again, don‘t sew over your shearing area or your pull cords, so you want to sew in between the pockets and this wide set of tape here, so along the bottom edge and along the top edge and also in between these two pieces and between the pockets and in between these tapes. So you actually have three rows of stitching. So go ahead and sew those and you could see my tape here is kind of coming down so pull that back under. And then I’ll show you how to pleat the tape.
One more thing before I sew my tape that I need to tell you, it’s very important that you sew your stitching lines in the same direction each time. Each time you will start where the knotted cords are on this end and so across the loose cords. Then for your next line of stitching you come back over here and sew in the same direction. You want all your stitching lines to be sewn in the same direction going across your tape.
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