It was a slightly challenging brief from our interior design client. “Charlie, how do we incorporate a sheer curtain into the elliptical window in the master ensuite, to give our client a little privacy, during the day?”

We were all anxious not to hide the unusual and rather beguiling shape of the window – as would inevitably happen if we were to go for the conventional option of a roman blind, and a pole running along the top of the window for curtains on the outside of the reveal would also interfere with the shape of the window.

So the solution we came up with was to make a cafe style curtain in a Volga Linen fabric, on a slot heading, threaded onto a nickel plated pole with recess brackets. That was the easy bit! The trickier part came in two stages – firstly I would need to accurately template the elliptical shape for our workroom to make the curtain from. Anticipating this would be the way we went I had remembered to pack my trusty roll of lining paper, which with the aid of a stanley knife blade and a special technique honed over several years of tackling conundrums like this, I used to replicate the exact shape of the window.

It was important that the curtain provided sufficient privacy whilst not materially impacting on the operation of the window – which hinges inwards along a central horizontal axis. So we added a 6cms upstand above the slot heading to provide us with as much height on the sheer curtain as possible.

Remember, if you’re making something similar, to allow enough depth in the slot, because you will be surprised how tight the curtain can become on the slot as the gathering takes effect.

The end result surpassed my expectations. Our workroom did a wonderful job reflecting the shape of the window in the curtain – no mean feat when you remember that they were not simply cutting the fabric to the shape of my template, but trying to mirror the shape of the template AFTER the gathering takes effect.