We’re getting ready to update both our instructions and our Widget Kits to remove the “No More Knots” Orbs from the Roman shade–building process.
We’ve been getting at least two calls a week from fabricators who used only the orbs (with no knots) to hold their cords while raising and lowering the shade. Unfortunately, the orbs were never designed to hold cords against the manual pulling force of a cordless Roman shade. As the shade gets lowered repeatedly, the cords can slip through the orb, one or more cords begin to reel up onto the Widget, and the whole shade starts lifting unevenly.
We’ve emphasized in instructions and blog posts that you must knot off each cord after the orb to prevent this slippage, but many fabricators are still skipping that step—and getting understandably worried when their shade goes crooked.
The most common concern about this that we hear is, “But I need to be able to adjust the shade in the field.” Actually, you don’t! If you extend the shade to its full operating length on your worktable, with the mounting board perpendicular to the table and the hem square to it, you can hand-tighten and knot your cords before pulling the Widget’s pin.
When you pull the pin with the cords hand-tight and the shade lying flat, extended, and square, it will hang the same way in your client’s window—no further adjustments needed.
So stay tuned: the orbs will soon be removed from all Widget Kits.
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