The Finished Drape

When I first introduced the music stand drape, some people mentioned they didn't know about different kinds of music stands. So I'll start with that. There are various styles of music stand that are portable-- i.e. you can fold them up and put them in a bag to take with you to a gig. I own two of them, and as previously mentioned, they are both hideous. My favorite is the Peak stand, which is very solid and sturdy. The only problem is, from the side the audience sees, it looks like this:

Industrial plastic is not the impression I like to convey with my harp.

Then there are the folding wire stands, which are lighter weight, but flimsy.

This one belonged to my sister before me and must be about 30 years old. I don't use it much because I can't put anything too heavy on it. There are newer designs of wire stands that allow for more adjustment and are slightly stronger, but they don't look any better.

For those who were wondering, here's how the drape goes on the stand; it's very simple.

With a wire stand, it works better if you add something to create a flat line at the top. When I used to use that stand regularly, I just set these on it:

They are simply two pieces of corrugated cardboard, covered with a gray satin just in case a corner of them should peek out from behind the drape. But I don't take this stand to gigs anymore, so it's no longer relevant.

There. Now you know way more about music stands than you ever wanted to if you don't use them yourself. On to the tatting. You can scroll through my recent posts to see the progress of making the Square Elegance motif and Christmas Tree Edging, both designed by Frivole. Here they are finally sewn onto the drape.

Oh, you wanted to see the drape actually hanging on the music stand? Well let me tell you, I took literally dozens of photos of that, with different types of lighting, from different angles, using different camera settings, with and without the flash. Here's the best one out of all of those.

Sometimes I wish I could hire a professional photographer for my blog. I can't, but this does give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Just enough embellishment to catch the eye, without being distracting. It ended up looking exactly as I envisioned it, and I am very pleased.