When I was at Ikea buying my drapery rods, I found this handy little accessory.
It's rubbery with some sort of armature inside of it, it's threaded to screw onto the Hugad drapery rods, and it's made to bend around corners!
I combined the black rod with these white brackets. I wanted the hardware to virtually disappear ... the bracket itself stayed white to match the window framework and trim, and I used black spray paint on the hook that holds the rod.
The side brackets are mounted to the face of the window frame, as far toward the wall as I could get them ...
Took this photo before I added the second screw that holds the bracket.
... and I installed one bracket in the center of the bay to hold the curved part of the rod assembly.
The bracket kit comes with a little slide-on thingie that covers the screws and helps make the bracket that much more subtle.
The rod bridges the space between the bracket and the side wall, so the drapes can be all the way against the wall into the corner of the bay.
I came up with a rather unconventional solution to the challenge of exactly how to get the drapery panels pushed all the way into the corner. They are rod pocket drapes, and the bracket hook would act as a stop and would keep the drapes from sliding all the way into the corner. To overcome this, I measured the distance from the hook to the wall, gathered the drapes onto a rod and marked this distance onto the gathered drapes with a pin, and cut an access hole into the back of the rod pocket.
When I put the drapes onto the rod, and the rod onto the bracket hook, I clipped the rod to the hook through this hole and the drapes hang perfectly. If I hadn't told you what I did, you would never know that this is how I made this work.
I have another fantastic trick to show you, one that I learned in THIS post from Design du Monde ... use a zip tie, the same color as the rod, to hold stationary panels back and keep them from ungathering. You absolutely can't see the zip tie unless you're craning your neck to see behind the drapes, and the drapes stay exactly where they're supposed to.
(Step-by-step photo tutorial to show you how I made the drapes is HERE.)
With this project complete, I can now move onto other things. Spring is sending signals that I hope I interpret to mean that it will be here soon. It seems like it's been a longer-than-normal winter, and I'm really ready to get outside and get my hands dirty. I have roses to prune, mulch to lay, gardens to plan ... and I can't wait to get to it!
