Curse of the Three Pleats

Structural projects are on hold right now as we wait for orders of clecos, scaffolding and an axle to arrive. While waiting, I decided to dig into old projects that I had on hold. First in priority is making the last set of curtains, which I failed to finish three years ago.

With all supplies on hand, this is a tedious, but easy job for anyone comfortable with a sewing machine. I made my curtains out of a shirting cotton with lycra mixed in, so sewing it is a little tougher than regular cotton. To protect the fabric from UV deterioration, I lined the fabric with blackout material–a polyester fabric coated with a rubberlike material to block out as much light as possible. That is a little more expensive, but I found it actually a bit easier to sew than muslin. My curse came in matching design to the carrier system…

For a brief time in the early 60s, trailer curtains were held up by a snap system. My initial obstacle when trying to replace the curtain was getting new snaps: trailer snaps are slightly different than standard snaps sold at fabric stores. After lots of searching, I found that you could get webbing with snaps preattached that worked (available from Beacon Fabrics).

My actual curse came from wanting triple pleated curtains, which seemed to be more vintage appropriate. Difficulty was, there was a little variability in pleats and there was no effective way to sew the snaps on by machine. Result–I ended up following the laborious effort of sewing on all the snaps by hand.

This past Cherry Blossom Rally, I got the chance to see the inside of Colin Hyde’s personal trailer from that same era. This unit is remarkable because it was kept in covered storage and was virtually unaltered from its original condition. Checking out the original curtains, I noted that they were a turquoise and brown plaid-with single pleats! That had the effect of reducing the fabric requirement–and made it possible to machine sew in the snap tape (due to the lower fuss factor).

Now that I only have one set of curtain (for my smallest window) left to make, I will stick to the three pleats. Anyhow, they do look better–but if I decide to make new ones, I’ll probably go with single pleats!