myrna everett

White Linen Draperies

12:16 am by myrna everett Leave a Comment

Seeking: White Linen Draperies

This was such a fun project from the very first phone call. My new client said she was moving from Orange County to San Diego to buy her very first home. Her vision: a black and white contemporary style with lots of natural materials. For the window coverings, white linen draperies and bamboo shades.

A mood board showing white and black decor with natural elements of wood flooring, wicker and plants — I like to prepare a mood board depicting all the elements I discuss with a client. This ensures the vision is heading in the right direction.

New homeowners are always excited about the possibilities and a favorite part of my job is to present them with great options. I try to keep up with the latest materials and find ways to incorporate them to fit my client’s needs.

My new customer already had most of her furnishings planned, but what she needed from me was window coverings. Because these always need to be custom-made, more guidance is needed for this than the rest of the design plan. However, right from the start this new homeowner knew exactly what she wanted.

Bamboo shades on the smaller windows with white linen draperies for her bedroom and living room.

The Window Covering Vision

Her vision was light bamboo style shades in a light color to go with the floors. The white linen drapes were to hang from simple black iron hardware. Some homeowners can be this specific, others not so much, but either way, this is where my expertise comes in. The bamboo shades were easy, we looked through samples until we found the perfect color and texture. For the draperies, white linen was fine in theory, but the idea of all those wrinkles made us both cringe! So, I recommended one of my favorite go-to-fabrics when people ask for linen. It looks like linen, but is 100% polyester, can withstand strong sunlight and has virtually no wrinkles.

A white linen-like fabric sample with a magnifying glass to show the detail — My favorite linen-like fabric from Fabricut is a fan favorite!

When it came to the simple black iron drapery hardware, I knew just the right style. French return! This style of hardware incorporates a beautiful curve at the end that serves as the bracket and eliminates the need for a finial. It’s clean and simple, yet elegant and sophisticated. From a practical standpoint, she needed this as the space to stack her draperies off the door was limited. This style allows the drapes to stack a little tighter because some of the pleats can slide around the corner. The pleat style we choose is an updated version of a French pleat, sometimes called a pinch pleat. It involves only two fingers in the pleat instead of the traditional three. This allows for less fabric and a smaller stack back. It’s also more contemporary, which fit our vision perfectly

White linen draperies on black wrought iron rods with French returns. — I love the simplicity of French returns and the ability to have the rings to slide around the corner when space is tight.

Not everyone has such a specific vision for their home and that’s OK. It’s fun to work with someone who knows exactly what they want because I know how to turn the vision into reality. But it’s also fun to tease the vision out of someone who is unsure. People always know what they like or don’t like, but sometimes need to be presented with ideas they can reject or embrace to understand their style is and how they want their home to feel.

master bedroom with a casual bedding and white linen drapes on black hardware — The primary bedroom is a cozy, sophisticated space. Casual bedding, a funky feathered light fixture and simple white linen drapes on black hardware complete the look.

white and black living room withe the kitchen in the back ground and white linen drapes over the doors. — My white linen draperies create the ability to have lots of light or privacy as needed.

Which ever design personality you happen to be, the journey is collaborative and enjoyable. I’m accepting new projects and I’d love to hear about yours!

Pinch Pleat Curtains

3:03 pm by myrna everett Leave a Comment

What exactly is a pinch pleat curtain? I find that everyone uses a slightly different terminology when it comes to drapery pleat styles. With that in mind, pictures are worth a thousand words, so let’s take a look at different ways to make a pinch pleat.

Pinch pleat curtains can be styled to fit your design personality

Traditional Pinch Pleat Curtains

Pinch pleat curtains, often called French pleat curtains or draperies are traditionally made up of three “fingers” per pleat. A small tack at the bottom holds these fingers together. In this case, the client’s home was French country making the pleat style the perfect choice. The banding adds a special detail that really elevates the design.

Photo of a pinch pleat curtains in white linen with a wide blue band — Katie Porter of KP Design Studio designed these gorgeous drapes for her Rancho Santa Fe client. This close up photo really shows off the intricate blue banding from Kravet

pinch pleat curtains in a living room framing a view to the courtyard outside. — The style and details of of these pinch pleat draperies is perfect for this French country home designed by KP Design Studio.

Sometimes less is more, so I often pare the pleat down to just two fingers like the photo below. I recommend this style for a more casual look or when a tighter stack-back is needed. Stack-back refers to the space a drapery takes up when it’s pushed back from the window. It’s especially helpful if there isn’t much room on either side of the window.

A close of a pinch pleat drapery with orange and pick embroidered on a brushed nickel drapery rod. — A pared down version of pinch pleat curtains has just two fingers of fabric in each pleat.

embroidered floral fabric pleated into draperies with brown velvet button and matching band — Delicately embroidered flowers and vines on a linen ground allow the button and ribbon accents to really stand out.

Details, details!

My client and I got very creative with the details for the dining room drapes in the photo above. This is another version of the two finger pinch pleat, but the addition of tiny velvet buttons and matching ribbon banding add a charming detail. That’s the beauty of custom made draperies, the sky is the limit and almost anything we can dream up, we can create!

Contemporary Pinch Pleat Curtains

I’m amazed at how many variations we create that start out with the simple pinch pleat. The purpose of the pleat is to maintain even fullness when they are pulled. Below are a few of my projects showing the various ways we’ve adapted the pinch pleat to suit the homeowner’s personal style. Each has a different design aesthetic but there’s no right or wrong, just what’s right for each of my clients.

cream pinch pleat drapes and iron curtain rod paired down to just one finger per pleat — This simple version of a pinch pleat drape contains just one finger of fabric. I call this a knife pleat. It is best known for its very small stacking space.

Below, we used a beautiful fabric from Stroheim to create these cartridge pleat drapes. French pleats starts out like this, but then the “fingers” get folded in to create a set of three. With this style, we leave the fingers out and stuff Dacron into the opening to retain the round shape of each pleat.

sheer drapery panels on a contemporary rod with metal art in the foreground — This stunning fabric from Stroheim was used in a design project I worked on with Dana from the The Dana Touch design firm.

Close up of sequined draperies with a cartridge pleat style — This close up gives you a better view of that gorgeous sequined fabric as well as the pretty pleat styling.

Close up of cream and brown linen drapes overlaid with a slight metallic sheen. — Inverted pleats can read more contemporary than a French pleat. I designed this cream and brown drape with a small beaded welt dividing the two colors. We used the client’s vintage brass and acrylic hardware for a stunning look in her dining room.

I love these brown and cream draperies. I’ve shown this picture in other blogs, but it’s a perfect example of a more contemporary version of a pinch pleat curtain. Essentially, it is what a French pleat looks like on the reverse side. As a designer, I love to get creative with fabrics and design details, but sometimes I wish I knew exactly how a new pleat style came to be. They all seem so obvious once you’ve seen them, but wouldn’t it be cool to invent a new pleat? The examples above are just a few variations that allow us to create the right drapery look for every style. If YOU have an idea about creating something you have never seen before, or, if you saw something you like in the photos above, I would love to be part of that collaboration.

“Bespoke” Dream Rooms

7:55 pm by myrna everett Leave a Comment

Bespoke

I love the word bespoke. It sounds like so much more than “custom made” or “made to order”. It’s seems more European somehow and makes me think of yards of silk being fashioned into an exquisite ball gown. Or an atelier where something magical is being created for some lucky individual. It’s a little old fashioned, but so is the experience of having someone extract the vision of what you want and turn it into a reality. Bespoke is the key to dream rooms.

What isYour Feeling of Home

Something you will treasure for years. When was the last time you experienced that? Lucky for me (and my clients) that’s what I get to do all day, every day. Bespoke is what we I use to create dream homes.We all know how we want to feel when we walk into our homes. Of course, it’s different for everyone, which is what makes home so special. How do you want to feel? Cozy and cocooned? Invigorated? Glamorous? Daring? Safe? Romantic? Sexy? Earthy? Some combination of these ideas? Or, something so completely different from anything you have ever seen but the idea speaks to your heart.

Glam bedroom with shaggy dog on the bed — “Darla” loves the good stuff and thinks this was all created just for her 🙂 In reality, the homeowner’s duvet cover was the inspiration for this primary bedroom. The wallpaper, custom window coverings, pillows and coverlet were all designed to bring out the duvet’s colors to create an upscale, glamorous bedroom.

I started my career in interior design helping people cover or dress their windows. Drapes and blinds; that’s what I cut my teeth on when I was a new, baby designer. Over the years, I found myself responding to the desire people had for more than just basic blinds. They would talk to me about their lives and their families and how they wanted to feel when they were at home. They would show me pieces of art or furniture that had special meaning to them. Things they wanted to incorporate in their homes even though it didn’t necessarily fit their design aesthetic.

Design Aesthetic Vs. Design Personality

I believe there is a design esthetic, and then there is having your personality reflected in your home. I would ask myself “How can I help weave this thing, this idea, or this feeling into a story about this person”. All these years later, I still don’t want to do renovations, pick tile or create a better floor plan. What I do want is to create special rooms that reflect a feeling and a personality. I do this through creative ideas, details and materials, weaving them into my bespoke window coverings, wallpapers, bedding, and reupholstery projects.Imagine,

Imagine I am the artisan and you are the visionary. You don’t have to know exactly what you want, just the sense of how you want to feel when you are enveloped by your home.

Unique Bespoke Wallpaper

Below is a great example of a very personalized dream room. My client, recently widowed, moved to her new La Jolla condo and wanted to make her home a happy place. One that evoked memories of her husband and all the beautiful things they had collected and created over the years. She’s an artist, and after a long search for the perfect wallpaper, she wanted something that looked something she had painted. This sparked my imagination, what we needed was custom wallpaper using one of her own beautiful paintings. She loved the idea, so we worked with Rebel Walls to have her favorite painting re-colored and enlarged. Now she treasures all the memories it evokes when she walks into her bedroom.

Wallpaper behind headboard — One of my client’s own paintings was used to create this one-of-a-kind wallpaper by recoloring it and having it enlarged to fit the space

Bed with original painting in the foreground with the same image enlarged for the wallpaper behind the headboard. — Front and center is the original work of art in vivid shades of purple and yellow juxtaposed against the same image re-colored and enlarged for the wallpaper behind. The essence of “bespoke”.

Your Vision

What is your vision of home? How do you want to feel when you are there? If you would like to collaborate, I would love to explore these ideas and help you create something perfectly bespoke in your home.

Myrna Everett is the founder of Home Vogue Interiors where we specialize in custom window fashions and other soft home goods. If you have enjoyed this blog post, please share it with others. If you are ready to start a conversation about your next project click on the “Your Project” button above and tell us what you’re working on and we’ll reach out to you and help you get started.