Ripped Curtain

[hdphilie]

Over the summer, our custodians opened and bagged all of the stage curtains so they could put a sealer on the stage floor. I had taken the bags off the front curtains ("grand curtains") to close them for a summer event that only required the stage apron. I left the other curtains bagged to keep dust and dirt off of them, as they are doing some major demolition work in another part of the building. I found yesterday that sometime in the past month, someone took the bag off of a traveling curtain and closed the curtain. What they forgot to do was to take the bag off the curtain on the other side of the stage. Of course the still-bagged curtain ripped as the rope was pulled to close the curtains. The ripped curtain is now hanging in the bag with just a couple of feet still attached/un-ripped at the top.

Obviously this curtain has to be replaced, but we have a couple of major events coming up in the next month. One of them is next week (expecting house capacity - almost 1000 people). Could I get by with "buying stock" in safety pins and pinning the curtain up at the top so it will at least be hanging up? Or am I just stuck until we can get new curtains? With this being a holiday, I haven't been able to speak with our school superintendent about this yet (this is a public school auditorium). Does anyone have any suggestions I can go to my superintendent with?

[koncept]

i wouldn't use safety pins, i would use black zip ties as they are slightly stronger. another option, but more time consuming is to go to a fabric store and buy some heavier strength thread and kinda sew it back up untill it can be taken down and possibly repaired properly.

[hdphilie]

Time-wise, I REALLY like the zip tie idea, but would I be adding problems by putting even small holes in the curtain for them?

[Footer]

Depending on the age of the soft good and how rotted the nap is, putting weight on small holes will rip out very quickly. I would suggest at least stitching it with a slip stitch or the like. Do a search for curtain repair, van has posted some good stuff on it. If you are looking for a quick and dirty way of doing it, just get it stiched up somehow if you are going to replace the good soon.

[Chaos is Born]

I am leaning towards the heavy weight thread since that won't break anymore threads while stitching it up.

[hdphilie]

Thanks for the thoughts. I will talk with my superintendent tomorrow and see what we can do about replacing the curtains. The curtains REALLY need to be replaced anyway.

[Van]

Wow ! Yuck! What a PITA!
I'm going to assume that these curtains are really old in the first place, which would be why it tore so easily. If this is the case, you've got a couple of issues you're going to be fighting, when trying to repair it. As older curtains get really brittle, the safty pins may not work, they might just pull right through the fabric. I would try the safety pins , placing them as close together as 3 inches at the most. I would also whip the leading edge,< onstage> through all the layers, with a heavy thread, putting the stitches as close together as possible. Even with the saftey pins I would go ahead and whip as much of the seam as possible. The more points of contact between the two seperate pieces will reduce the stress on each individual stitch, thus reducing the chance that any one individual pin or stitch will pull through the edge on the rotten fabric.
One more thing that might help, if these are going to be trashed anyway, then go to the store and buy some "iron-on" patches. Iron them onto the upstage side of the curtain, every so often, these will assist in gripping the curtain fibers as much as possible. These would be in addition to the stitching

I hope that helps.

[maccor]

I second the use of iron-on patches. My curtains are 40+ years old. I've had to use the patches and they work great! They are strong enough to even repair ripped chain pockets. I get the black ones at Wal-Mart (4"X6")and usually cut them in 1/2 or 1/3 length wise. I use a small formica topped desk as an ironing surface and put them on the upstage/non-velour side. I've spanned existing seams without a problem. If you are careful about laying the 2 curtain sides together before ironing, you can't even see the patch. Especially since velout tends to rip in a straight line, they are a good fix. The art dept. probably has an iron you can borrow. Some of the repairs are 3 years old and the curtains get a lot of rough use all year long.

[Footer]

Originally Posted by maccor

I second the use of iron-on patches. My curtains are 40+ years old. I've had to use the patches and they work great! They are strong enough to even repair ripped chain pockets. I get the black ones at Wal-Mart (4"X6")and usually cut them in 1/2 or 1/3 length wise. I use a small formica topped desk as an ironing surface and put them on the upstage/non-velour side. I've spanned existing seams without a problem. If you are careful about laying the 2 curtain sides together before ironing, you can't even see the patch. Especially since velout tends to rip in a straight line, they are a good fix. The art dept. probably has an iron you can borrow. Some of the repairs are 3 years old and the curtains get a lot of rough use all year long.

Really, 40 years... If you wanted to you could play the flame proofing game and see if you can not get some new goods, but at the same time you could just lose the goods all together. Those things are probably shedding very badly, and are basically tinderboxes hanging in the air. You might want to start investigating new soft goods strictly from a safety standpoint, unless you sent them out to be flame proofed in the last few years and still have documentation on that.

[stagetechie]

we used safety pins and gaff tape to fix our curtain covering out cyc.