callaloo, Thanks for responding and posting your photo. When I saw it I remembered the post from summertime when you were wondering how to manage that long expanse without doing separate rods for the windows. Great solution! I like seeing how neatly the grommets stack when the curtains are pushed aside. Am trying to avoid the bunched up look I think there will be with pinch-pleated panels, etc. Your picture also shows that they can work with a white pole. I was hoping not to have to go with metal in this room. Nice punch of color on your walls. Your space looks neat and fresh!

As someone who has always loved the way pinch pleat drapes hang, and are easy to open/close and keep clean...it's getting really, really hard to find them anymore unless you have them custom made. We recently hung some grommet panels in a semi-sheer in our dining room (where they would only rarely need to be opened/closed) and they are gorgeous. They hang nicely and no bulking at the top. A few months later we tried some black-out curtains with the grommet top - these we do open/close daily - and they have been just great. Mine are here to stay. I think they look much better and hang a lot better than fabric bunched up/gathered on a rod. I see them in quite a few of the high end catalogs. The problem is that like pinch-pleated drapes, they are not cheap to make. The grommets are expensive and add to the cost of the curtain significantly. (I looked into making my own but quickly decided it wasn't worth it when I saw the cost of the grommets)...so it will be interesting to see how long they do last.

I see. I find all your suggestions interesting, as well as one I saw on the sewing section suggesting eyelet tape. Thanks! The food was yogurt mixed with cherry concentrate, very very healing to both kidneys and pneumonia. The staff were very negligent in leaving him for a long time both in the A.C. cat-scan room, as well as the A.C. hallway afterward, without immediate transport. When I begged for a blanket, the giant took his blessed time producing yet another THIN quilt. My dad whispered to me that he was pulling up the "blanket" to cover his nose in an attempt to warm his body. These insane places are from the Dark Ages! So if you can believe this, I took the initiative, and got my dad's aide to grab one side while I grabbed the other, to wheel his heavy bed around the corner of the hallway where it was much warmer. Then to boot, when the tardy transport guy finally arrived, he put my dad thru an I.D. questionnaire to ensure it really was him. Cookoo! Sigh..by now he is back at the nursing home he was in previously, and at least there they have a personal fridge.These past years & months have been thoroughly draining. While I do appreciate the suggestions, I too had thought the cute pink bag would be too insulated & outside my budget, and I wouldn't have been able to lug even a tiny fridge to hospital, as I'm a weak shrimp & had plenty other stuff to lug there. I actually thought the eyelet tape might have been a solution, though wasn't sure my plastic chain could fit thru. http://www.richelieu.com/documents/docsPr/39/31/5W/BK/39315WBK/1359407_700.jpg

I suspect the fabric might not be suitable for a fusible interfacing if it is nylon because it will just melt. If you add interfacing, you are going to have to sew it in. The top hem should be opened up and the interfacing inserted. Or, depending on how your panel is finished at that top, you may be able to cut a piece of interfacing, and from the side, thread it through the top hemmed casing by attaching something like a very large safety pin and threading it in much like you would insert elastic in a casing. If there is no opening to be had at the side of the top hem, you can always make one that you can just fix with a bit of stitching, or even a small bit of adhesive after you have threaded the interfacing through it. If your panel is very wide, it might not be practical to try to pull a length of interfacing through the entire length at once. You could always made some slits in the back to give you several points of entry if you have to work with shorter lengths of interfacing. These slits could be stitched or held with a bit of fabric adhesive. They will never show. The only real problem might be if you ever have the dry cleaned that bit of adhesive might be a factor. Otherwise, no one will know. And, if you can, I think that it would still benefit from a line of stitching across the width of the panel to hold that in place and make it play well with the panel fabric. I guess you could also just sew a strip of interfacing on the backside of the hemmed top edge of the panel. Make two lines of stitching, one across the top and one across the bottom of the strip. If you make a careful choice of thread color you might not notice it muc With interfacing, you will have three layers of material to cinch in the ring of the grommet. Is that going to work for you? If you think it will, I suggest that you sew around your marked circle before you cut the circle out from the fabric to prepare it for the grommet. At least baste those three layers together just within the line of cutting before you cut. This might be of help to do also since you say that it is a loose weave. I would not go too heavy for the interfacing because the curtain has to be able to be flexible and not push back on itself. If the interfacing is too heavy the curtain may have a tendency to bounce back when you try to open it and stack it. It just needs to carry weight and give stability to the open weave and give a good base for that grommet to clamp on to.