My Adventures in DIYing Roman Shades

I wish I could say today’s post is a “tutorial,” but it’s not.  It is more of a comparison of the tutorials I used to DIY two roman shades for our kitchen.  In the end, both turned out well, but not without a few snafoo’s (did I really just say snafoo?) along the way.

I thought instead of writing a tutorial, I would share the things I learned  as I built mine.

After I wrote this post on roman shades, I had an email from a reader, begging me to please line my shades so they looked more professional…I thought, DONE. I can do that.

After all of my planning, I decided I wanted hang the shades as outside mounts, leaving the mini-blinds beneath.

We get so much dust  blowing around in Clovis that it is absolutely impossible to keep windows clean.  I like the option of having the blinds that I can open to allow light in, but still provides enough barrier to shield the eye sore of dusty windows.

I started out with high hopes that I could sew the perfect roman shades for our future home buyer.  I wanted to do this project the “right” way, so I made up my mind to sew them from scratch using 33 Shades of Green’s tutorial.

I did not take photos as I worked through this tutorial.  Before I started, I thought to myself…I’ll practice on this one and write the tutorial for the next one…sorry.

I was on track to sew the “perfect” roman shades using Alissa’s tutorial all the way through Step 8.

8.  Lay the dowel pockets on the liner at each spot you made a pencil mark and pin.  Place the strips with the 1/2″ folded side toward the bottom of the shade.

Step 9…I lost it.  I did not want the stitch for my dowel rod pockets to show through to the front of the shade so I only sewed the dowel pocket to the lining, not the whole shade…not a good idea.  I believe I also sewed my pockets upside down…I am still unsure about that.

In the end, I was unable to get my dowel pockets right, so I had to improvise and turn it into a fixed roman shade.  This was ok with me because like I said above, I mainly want it for decoration, not function.

With the change in plan, I had to find a tutorial for how to make a Fixed roman shade…Tutorial 2…Fly Through Our Window Fixed Roman Shade.

This time I created the folds (making them as even as possible) by pinching together the fabric.  When it looked the way I wanted it to, I sewed a straight stitch all the way down the left and right side of the shade while holding the folds in place.  Basically, I sewed the folds into the place where I wanted them.  My shade was starting to come together!

I went to hang my shade up using the L-brackets and 1″x2″ board Darcy mentioned in her fixed shade tutorial.  Unfortunately, I found out it sagged (alot) in the middle.

To fix that issue, I hand stitched the folds together (stitching the lining fabric to the fold below it) length wise.  After that step, it was finished, finally.  From there Alfred hung it using the L-brackets and 1″x2″.

After I finally finished the kitchen sink shade, I decided to try a different approach…NO SEW Roman Shades.  For the second shade I used the following tutorials:

Lined No-Sew Roman Shades- Beneath My Heart

Make Shades out of Mini Blinds- Little Green Notebook

Making Roman shades out of mini-blinds was a lot easier than sewing them yourself (duh!).

It took a full day to make them, and it was a fairly tedious process, but other than that I think they turned out great!  I took photos a long the way to write up a tutorial for you, but realized after I was about 80% finished I did not have my SD card in my camera so none of the photos recorded.

This is the step I finally realized I needed my SD card…

At this point I had already:

• measured the fabric and lining, cutting it to size- Beneath my Heart tutorial
• adhered the lining to the fabric using double sided fusion lining- Beneath my Heart tutorial
• removed the slats from the mini blinds, adding back the # of slats I needed, spacing them 8″ apart- Little Green Notebook
• glued the slats to the fabric- Little Green Notebook
• folded over the left and right sides, creating a hem and glued using Fabric glue- Little Green Notebook

Next, I created a hem on the bottom of the shade and attached the thick bottom slat to it and hung it.

This shade is a fully functioning shade.

Although, all four tutorials were great.  I actually like the way the mini-blind roman shade turned out the best!

What do you think?

 

 

 

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