Alendel Roman Shade Fabrics

A Roman shade is sewn, not assembled, and it starts where a drapery starts: face fabric cut on grain and pattern-matched, a lining that carries the light and the UV, and a construction that decides how the folds break. This page is every Alendel drapery cloth that runs up the roll at 60 inches or narrower, 2255 colourways in 237 patterns: the 54 inch plains, the cotton prints, the jacquards, the embroideries, the chenilles and velvets, and the decorative blackouts that darken a bedroom in the face cloth alone. The wide-width railroaded goods are left off on purpose; the weave runs the wrong way for a fold.

Every pattern here is also a drapery cloth, and that is the point of the page. Our drapery clients in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Boca Raton and Palm Beach order Roman shades for the secondary windows, the kitchen, the study, the baths and the children's rooms, from the same bolt as the panels in the living room, so the house reads as one scheme. A pattern page shows every colourway with the swatch, Alendel's width, content, repeat, care code, fire listings and weight, and the stock flag, and a filter below sorts the page by type, colour, care, fire listing, Oeko-Tex and book.

Alendel's wide-width cloths, the 118 to 145 inch voiles and plains, are railroaded: the cloth is turned sideways so the width becomes the height of a drapery panel. That is exactly right for a seamless wall of glass and exactly wrong for a Roman shade, whose folds want the weave running up the shade, on grain, so the hem hangs straight and the folds break evenly. We do not cut railroaded goods into Romans. Where a room wants a wide-width sheer on the window wall and a Roman on the side window, we pick a 54 inch cloth from the same Alendel book in the same colour family, and the two read as one scheme.

The 54 to 60 inch cloths on this page are the same ones on the drapery fabrics page, and every one of them is listed with both uses. The choice between a drapery and a Roman on a given window is about the window, not the cloth: a Roman clears a counter, a bathtub or a desk and takes no wall for a stack; a drapery softens a big opening and slides clear of a door. A blackout Roman in a child's room, a print Roman over the kitchen sink and lined panels in the living room can all come from one bolt.

Two numbers on the pattern page settle most Roman decisions. The repeat, matched across every fold and every window in the room, which sets the yardage on a print or a jacquard. And the weight per yard, which sizes the headrail and the lift and tells us whether a hobbled fold, which doubles the cloth in every pleat, is the right call for that cloth. The care code matters on a kitchen or bath shade; the fire listing matters when the shades are going into a condo common area or a hotel room.

A Roman shade in an Alendel cloth comes out of the same workroom as our draperies and is built the way our published Roman work was: flat Roman shades through the baths, closets and powder room of a new estate at Landmark Ranch Estates in Southwest Ranches, outside-mounted to the ceiling or inside the pocket, lined in black where a Roman had to black out and motorized where one covers a bedroom window. Hems are weighted to hang straight, seams disappear into the folds, patterns are matched across every fold and window, and the headrail is sized to the exact opening for an inside or outside mount. Our guide to every Roman shade fold type shows what a flat, relaxed and hobbled fold do to a plain and to a print.