The present invention relates generally to the construction of fabric window shade that is generally referred to as Roman shades.
Roman shades in general consist of a front fabric panel backed with a drapery lining. There are several “folds” on a Roman shade. At the back (the drapery lining) of each “fold”, there are two or more lift rings, through which lift cords are threaded, and achieving the wavy folds pattern, when the shade is pulled up, or dropped down, depending on the specific implementation. A repetitive wavy pattern exists naturally as a result of the folds and the horizontal lines of lift rings.
Present invention discloses and claims the construction of wavy pattern that resembles the result on Roman shade, but is based upon double-weaving fabric to make the wavy patterns even without pulling up or dropping down some of the folds, and thus is a simpler and more efficient way of producing Roman-shade-like feature.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate the preferred embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.
A brief description of the drawings is as follows:
a and 2b show the creation of wavy pattern by overlapping some portion of back layer.
a, 3b and 3c show the creation of wavy pattern by shortening center portion of back layer per each fold.
In
A fold is formed between any two horizontal junctions, labeled as HJ.
For the horizontal junction, it can be done by stitching together, glued together, or other methods generally known in the industry and requires no disclosure herein and does not formed part of the claimed subject matter herein.
In
Plastic or other rigid material of ring structure can be affixed to the cut out holes, to protect the edges of the holes from being frayed quickly due to the friction of the pull cords.
In
The shortening can be done by cutting away a portion, then rejoining the remaining back layer, in each fold, thus resulting the desired wavy pattern.
In addition, wavy pattern can also be produced, as depicted in
In
The window shade made pursuant to present invention contains desirable wavy patterns, even at time when the window shade is fully deployed. In contrast, Roman shades as generally available today on the market produce the desired wavy pattern only when the shades are either pulled up, pulled down, but not at the naturally deployed state.
By using double-weaving fabric to produce the wavy pattern similar to Roman shade, present invention introduces an easy and efficient way of doing that.