Yellow Chevron Curtains 2: Taping Off the Pattern

This post continues from the last. If you want to know how to mark your design see the last post.

4. Taping the Chevron Pattern:

If you thought the last post was confusing, wait until you have to tape. (I literally spent six hours taping my first curtain, only too see that my peeks and valleys were not lined up. I had to start again and was very unhappy. So unhappy, that I did not take one picture to record my epic fail.)

I have drawn out the process on graph paper to make it easier to understand. Essentially this is what you will do with your curtain.

What you want to do when taping is to remember that you will be painting between the tape on every other zig-zag. In the photo of the actual curtains above, you can see that the yellow chevron stripes are painted only every other gap between the tape. I used the green frog tape to mark the stripes I was not going to paint. 

First Tape Row:

I started at with the bottom row. I made each marks as described in the last post. I taped between these marks. Starting in the left bottom corner, I stretched my tape to the first point six inches up and over from the corner on a diagonal. Make sure that the bottom of your tape (the part that will later be a strong yellow edge) hits both the valley and the peek. In the drawing above you can see that the blue tape (a blue line) has the bottom edge of the "tape" touching the edge you want to be yellow later.

Be careful that the corners of your pattern are nice and clear.

In order to get the chevron stripes the same width I had to remember that only one edge of my tape would mark the edges of the yellow stripe.  You will only be painting over, one side of the tape to get the nice yellow stripe. If you look at the diagram above, or bellow. you can see that the tape goes on the inside of the stripes that will not be painted (the white stripes). I kept them straight by adding big green "x's" to remember not to paint there.

The tape has to be lined up so the bottom edge of the blue tape is along the top of the first and second rows of marks. Then the top of the blue tape has to along the third and fourth rows. This creates the negative space (where you paint the yellow) the same width as the positive space (white). Another way to think of it is that only one edge of the blue tape is actually the edge of the chevron pattern, where you will be painting. You will  only be painting over one side of the blue tape, so only that side has to be perfect.

I know this sounds very confusing. But just remember that you are, in essence, just taping from one point to the next on the grid of dots you created in the last post. Be sure to keep the bottom (or top) edge of your tape on each mark. This helps keep the lines straight and the valleys and peeks clear.

Continue to tape your design until the whole curtain is done. I taped two of my curtains off at the same time so that I could line up the chevron pattern across the two curtain panels. It took me about 3-4 hours to mark and tape each curtain. I was very pregnant at the time, so bathroom breaks, squatting, bending and crawling around on the floor took longer than usual (man I was so sore after each curtain).

Yay! Once you have these babies taped, you are good to go. The painting is so easy!!

Come back next week for what should be a very quick tutorial on how to paint and hang these lovelies.