headings · layers · fitting
Made up and hung
A curtain is made flat on a table and finished upright at a window.
Making up turns the cut lengths into a curtain — joined, lined, interlined, headed and weighted. Fitting puts it on a track or a pole fixed to the wall the visit found. This page follows both, and ends with what you keep: how to draw the curtain, and how to look after it.
Five headings, seen from above
The heading decides how much cloth a curtain takes, how it folds, and how far it stacks back when it is open. Press a heading to see its folds from above.
Stack-back figures are rules of thumb: a heavier cloth, or a lined and interlined curtain, stacks wider.
Three layers, locked together
The widths are joined with their selvedges trimmed or snipped so the seams lie flat, and the half widths go to the outer edges. The side hems are turned. The interlining is laid on the face cloth and locked in — long, loose stitches down the length that hold it without pulling — and the lining goes on last.
Penny weights are sewn in at the corners and the seams, and the hem corners are mitred so they lie flat and neat; a sheer takes chain weight along its hem instead.
Before it leaves the table the curtain is dressed: the folds are set and tied loosely, so that once it hangs it falls into the same even folds every time it is drawn.
Fitting, by the wall it meets
Stone, brick, concrete and plasterboard each take their own fixing — masonry plugs into the solid walls, cavity fixings into plasterboard — chosen at the visit for the weight of the curtain that will hang from them.
- Sandstone tenement bays
- Sash and case windows set deep in the stone, so the ingo leaves room to choose between a blind inside the recess and curtains across the face. A canted bay is three windows at angles to each other, and each face is measured on its own.
- Multi-storey flats
- The opening and the fixing surface are checked at the visit before a track or blind is chosen; the five 20-storey blocks on Charles Street, built in 1962 and since renovated, are part of the window stock of Royston.
- New homes
- Sighthill’s new streets replace the tower blocks of 1964–69. In a new home the wall build-up decides the fixing, and the track is chosen to suit both the wall and the heading.
Blinds and their cords
Every corded or chained blind goes up with its safety device and its cleat placed at least 1.5 metres from the floor, as the Office for Product Safety and Standards advises. The same guidance carries one more line worth keeping in mind at hand-over:
“Children love to climb so keep furniture away from blinds. This includes cots, beds, highchairs, and play pens.”
What a lined curtain does at a sash window
Historic Environment Scotland measured how much less heat escapes through a traditional sash and case window with each measure in place. These are their figures from their tests, quoted as published.
What you keep
Draw a curtain by its leading edge, or with a draw rod, never by pulling the middle of the cloth: that way the hooks and gliders take the weight. Care goes by the fibre — the composition on the label decides whether a curtain is cleaned, washed or brushed — and the label is handed over with the curtain.
Made-to-measure curtains and blinds are made to your specifications, so an order is confirmed only once the window has been measured and every choice has been gone through with you.