“Moulin Rouge” comes to life through drapery
A couple of weeks ago, we made a set of custom stage curtains that I thought were so beautiful and innovative that I just had to post about them. I have seen a lot of gorgeous drapery over the years at Sew What? but these drapes really are something special - a modern-day re-creation of the original Moulin Rouge stage drapes!
Once the fabric for the drapes was chosen (IFR Crimson 15oz Synthetic Velour), it was time to decide how to incorporate the decorative images that were essential to recreating the iconic Moulin Rouge drapes. We considered hand-painting the images onto the drape (this would have been the obvious choice as recently as a year or two ago). Instead, the design team thought “outside the box” and said, “Why not digitally print the image directly onto the fabric?”
John Rios of Grafix Jam was able to re-create the Moulin Rouge imagery into a digital vector file, which our printing staff used to print directly onto the fabric. This was not an easy process – printing onto colored fabric presents a unique set of challenges – but our design team managed the task brilliantly, printing an under layer of white ink and then overlaying the colored image, to get just the right image color.
Our sewing staff then took on the challenge, sewing together the drapes and adding rich gold bullion fringe and trims.
The finished drapery, consisting of two main drapes at 30′ h x 31′ w, with a matching 8′ h x 60′ 6″ w border, turned out to be absolutely gorgeous – we are so proud to have made this on behalf of our sister company Rent What? Inc. and to know that, as part of their rental inventory, these drapes will be featured in concerts across the country. As a matter of fact, the drapes are making their debut this month as a key component of the stage design for R. Kelly’s “Ladies Make Some Noise” tour!
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Wow! That was great! Thanks for the post!
Comment by Anonymous — February 11, 2010 #