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A closed steel tape measure, a carpenter’s pencil and a pinked cutting of raspberry damask on the red sandstone sill of a tenement sash window at dusk

every window, worked out

Measuring up

Each window in the house, measured once and worked out to the metre.

Give a window its measurements and the cloth it is to be made in, and this page works out the widths, the cut drop on the pattern repeat and the metres of face cloth, lining and interlining, for curtains or for a Roman blind, with the heading, the hem and the side turnings counted one by one.

Add each window to a list. The list stays in this browser until you send it, and it can go with a request for cuttings, so the office knows which windows the cloth is for. Sent a request already? Attach the list to it with the reference.

Measure a window How each figure is worked out

One window at a time

The figures to start with are a worked example: a pair of pinch-pleated curtains for a 230 cm track in a cloth with a 64 cm repeat. Change any of them, or switch to a Roman blind.

The window
Curtains
The Roman blind
Hems and heading
The cloth

This window

Covered
230 cm of track and returns
Flat width of cloth
595 cm (230 cm × 2.5, and the side turnings)
Widths
5, 2 and a half to each curtain, the half widths at the outer edges
Drop with heading and hem
260 cm
Cut drop on the repeat
320 cm, 5 repeats of 64 cm
Face cloth
16.00 m
Lining
13.00 m
Interlining
none
The flat cloth for this window: 5 widths of 137 cm laid under a track and returns of 230 cm track and returns 230 cmhalf1234half5 widths of 137 cm, 595 cm needed flat
For curtains, the cloth as it lies flat, width by width, under the track it gathers onto. For a blind, the finished blind and where its rods sit.

Attach them to a request already sent

The window in the form above is attached on its own; fill it in again and attach once more for each further window, up to six.

The office sees the measurements with the request and works every figure out again from them. They are kept with the request and deleted with it.

Measurements already attached

How each figure is worked out

No statute or British Standard sets these sums. They are the cutting-room method this company works by, the same one behind the cut plan, with the heading, the hem and the side turnings counted separately. The allowances are starting figures: whoever makes the curtains or the blind confirms them before the first cut.

Curtains

  1. Covered = track + a return at each side + the overlap where a pair meets.
  2. Flat width = covered × fullness + a side turning at each side edge of each curtain.
  3. Widths = flat width ÷ width of the cloth, always rounded up. A pair takes half each; an odd number leaves a half width, which goes to the outer edge.
  4. Drop with allowances = finished drop + heading + hem.
  5. Cut drop = drop with allowances, rounded up to a whole number of pattern repeats, so the design lines up across every seam.
  6. Face cloth = widths × cut drop, and one more repeat for a half-drop match. Lining and interlining = widths × drop with allowances: they have no pattern to match.

A Roman blind

  1. Finished width: inside the recess, the narrowest of the three recess widths less 1 cm, so the blind runs without catching the ingo; on the wall face, the opening + the amount past it at each side.
  2. Cut width = finished width + a side turning at each edge.
  3. Widths = cut width ÷ width of the cloth, rounded up. One is the aim: a blind is planned to avoid a join.
  4. Cut drop = finished drop + heading + hem, rounded up to whole repeats.
  5. Face cloth = widths × cut drop, plus a repeat for a half-drop match where widths meet. Lining = widths × (drop with allowances + the pocket allowance for each rod). Interlining = widths × drop with allowances.
  6. Rods sit every drop ÷ (rods + ½), with the bottom section half the others, so the hem lines up with the folds when the blind is drawn up. The cord’s cleat goes at least 1.5 metres from the floor, as the Office for Product Safety and Standards advises: the fold planner places it.

The worked example: 230 cm of track at a pinch pleat’s 2.5 × fullness is 575 cm, and four 5 cm side turnings make 595 cm of flat cloth. 595 ÷ 137 is 4.3, so five widths: two and a half to each curtain. A 230 cm drop with 15 cm for the heading and 15 cm for the hem is 260 cm; on a 64 cm repeat that rounds up to five repeats, 320 cm. Five drops of 320 cm are 16 metres of face cloth, and the lining, with nothing to match, takes five drops of 260 cm: 13 metres.

A sash window in its stone opening, marked with where each measurement is taken: the track width above the opening, the drop from the track down to the sill, below it or to the floor, and the recess width at the top, the middle and the bottom track width to the sill below it top middle bottom

Measuring your own window

  1. Use a steel tape, not a cloth one: a cloth tape stretches. Write every figure down in centimetres as you go.
  2. Curtains: measure the track or pole from end to end, not the glass. If there is no track yet, measure where it will go, usually past the opening on each side so the curtains can stack back clear of the window.
  3. Measure the drop from the top of the track (from the ring for a pole) down to where the hem will be: just above the sill, below it, or a centimetre off the floor.
  4. A blind inside the recess: measure the width at the top, the middle and the bottom. Old openings are seldom square, and the narrowest is the one that fits. Then the drop from the top of the recess to the sill.
  5. Note the depth of the ingo, what is in the way (a radiator, a shutter box, a socket), and what the wall is made of.
  6. Measure each window, even ones that look the same. In a tenement, two windows side by side can differ by a centimetre or two.

In north and north-east Glasgow, a measuring visit does this for you, and when the company measures, the measurements are its responsibility. When you measure yourself, the curtains are made to your figures: the terms of sale say how they are checked first.