Alendel Fabrics

The width decides the construction before anything else. Goods at 54 to 60 inches run up the roll: a panel is made of joined widths with the seams hidden inside the pleats, and a Roman shade comes from a single width up to roughly 50 inches finished. Goods at 110 to 145 inches are wide-width, railroaded: the cloth is turned sideways so the width becomes the drop, and a wall of glass up to about ten feet high runs without a seam. That is how we sew sheers across an ocean wall, and it is why wide-width goods are not cut into Roman shades; the weave runs the wrong way for the folds.

The repeat is the distance before a design repeats itself, vertically and across. We match it at every seam and from window to window in a room, so the yardage on a print or a jacquard is figured on the repeat rather than the finished size. A plain has no repeat, which is one reason a plain costs less to make up than a print of the same price per yard.

The care code is Alendel's shorthand for the cleaning it listed with the cloth: WA is washable, P is professional dry clean, WA-P is either, S is dry clean or a solvent spot clean, W is a water spot clean, WS is either kind of spot clean and O means read the instructions. It matters most on sheers, which are the panels that get washed, and on anything over a bath or in a kitchen.

The F/R line lists the flame tests the cloth has passed. NFPA 701 is the one drapery is asked for by a condo association, a hotel or an office, and CAN/ULC S109 is its Canadian equivalent. CAL 117, NFPA 260 and UFAC Class 1 are upholstery tests and FMVSS 302 is an automotive one; they appear on the multipurpose cloths because Alendel sells those for furniture too. A cloth with no F/R line is a residential cloth unless a treated lining or a certificate is arranged for the project.

Alendel cloth goes into the same rooms as the rest of our work: ripplefold sheers on ceiling tracks across a Sunny Isles or Miami Beach living room, pinch pleat and Euro pleat panels on decorative rods in a Coral Gables or Boca Raton house, blackout draperies on bent motorized tracks around a bedroom's angled glass, flat-fold Roman shades through the kitchens, baths and studies of a Southwest Ranches estate. The published case studies on this site show the construction: ripplefold sheers on Lutron Sivoia QS tracks across five rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Residences Miami Beach, wide-width sheers on recessed Somfy tracks across an ocean wall in Boca Raton, an FR blackout drapery on two bent motorized tracks in a Boca Raton master bedroom and flat Roman shades through the baths and closets of a new estate in Southwest Ranches. An Alendel sheer, blackout or 54 inch plain is made up exactly the same way.