SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO GET POSTS BY EMAIL

Enter your email address:

Monday, November 29, 2010

Window Mistreatments: Re-covering an Old Roman Shade

I've finally (well almost) finished the baby's room! Yesterday B Daddy took the Squirt on a very long errand and challenged me to have the curtains done by the time they got home.

Challenge accepted. And I must say I'm pretty stinking proud of my eight and three-quarters months pregnant self.

Since I'd already spent waaaaaaaay too long making Roman shades the old-fashioned way for these windows once, I was heartbroken at the thought of abandoning them and going through the same torture to make brand new ones that were more girly.

The solution? Make use of my new best friend Fabri-Tac. I had never realized such a fabulous thing existed until I used it on the Squirt's new bedroom curtains. I'm now addicted to the stuff.

The project took me an hour and a half total and 45 minutes of that time was spent getting up off the floor once I'd finished. The situation was complicated by this 38.5 week pregnant belly.

(Pretty sure this picture is not out of focus...that mirror just REALLY needs to be cleaned.)

Here's the easy-peasy-process in pictures:

1. Lay out your old curtain face-down on top of your new fabric. Cut to size, leaving a generous border on all four sides for "hemming" and folding over.


2. "Hem" the sides. Now I actually pulled out my sewing machine here because my supply of Fabri-Tac looked dangerously low. But you should buy a full bottle of the magic stuff and glue/fold your edges in for the same effect in 1/4 of the time.


3. Then fold your fabric around the edges of the old curtain and glue!



For $35 (cost of fabric) for two curtains, I don't think I could have done much better at Wal-Mart and I'm thrilled that this fabric works with our blue "boy" nursery but girls it up some.


P.S. This would work equally well to turn any Big-Box-bought Roman shade into something much classier!

*********************************************************************************
New here? Welcome! 

Check out my most popular posts

Follow me on Pinterest 

Subscribe by email --> over in the sidebar

*********************************************************************************

13 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip! Can't wait to see photos of that sweet baby girl!

    ReplyDelete
  2. i'm very impressed. look how crafty you've become!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great job, Miss Kate...I will be praying for your delivery...blessings.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love the fabric...where did you get it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous - thanks for stopping by! The fabric came from an independent store in Alpharetta, GA called Karen's Fabrics. Send me an email if you're really interested and I can find the name/manufacturer for you!

      Delete
  5. I love this idea! I've been gun shy about making some from scratch. I see that the original shade has the rods/weights in it to force the nice pleats when folding up, did you also attach the new fabric to those areas so that it would follow suit when pulling up? I will need to raise and lower mine often and don't want to be adjusting by hand each time!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was worried about the same thing - wasn't sure if the pleats would fold up correctly with the new fabric over top...but it hasn't been an issue. I didn't attach the new fabric to the old at the pleat points at all and both curtains fold up perfectly. Thanks for stopping by and happy gluing! :)

      Delete
  6. You turned it out beautiful.....brilliant idea.
    Roman shades concord, ca

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! It is one of my favorite house projects to date. :)

      Delete
  7. Your shades are awesome (love the fabric)! I'm going to try your technique on the shades in my bedroom. Thanks for the tutorial.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Would you still remember the manufacturer's name?

    ReplyDelete
  9. You make it look easy, good job. I have an additional problem. My shade faces an outside window in which the back of shade will be visible to all entering home. How can I make the back of shade look good?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lonnie! As you can see from the second to last picture, the majority of the backside of the shade is white, those hemmed edges that show the pattern are completely hidden from the outside view by the window casing. If the back of your existing shade isn't white, I would suggest cutting a length of white fabric to size and using Fabri-tac to glue it on the back side. Hope that helps!

      Delete

 
site design by designer blogs