I am a DIY-aholic lately! My poor Lobster just hides in his man cave on the weekends because I’m too busy cutting, sewing, gluing, etc. to pay him any attention. It’s a good thing he likes his man cave…
Anyway, you might recall that I mentioned making a faux roman shade for my kitchen window. Using Censational Girl’s tutorial as a guide, I decided to give it a go. Here’s what I used:
Supplies to Make a Faux Roman Shade
- 3 yards of fabric
- 3 yards of blackout liner in white
- Sewing machine
- White thread and sewing needle
- A 48″ long piece of wood
- 5 36″ long, 1/2″ diameter wooden dowels
- Hot glue gun
- Drill and wood screws
First, I laid out my fabric and trimmed off the selvage on each side. Then I measured the width of my window (about 48 inches) and added two inches for hemming (50 inches) and then cut my fabric to be 50 inches wide.
Then I laid my blackout liner on top of my fabric (wrong sides facing), trimmed the liner to be the same width as the fabric, pinned the liner to the fabric and then sewed the fabric and liner together on all sides.
Then I created a 1″ hem on three sides (leaving the top of the fabric un-hemmed).
When the fabric and liner was all hemmed, I laid it back out, right side down, and placed the piece of wood at the top of the panel, leaving 1″ extra at the top. Then I wrapped that extra fabric around the top of the wood and hot glued it.
Now the tough part: creating the pleats. I don’t know if I’m just a moron or if creating even pleats is hard for everyone, but it took me a good hour to make five even, straight pleats of generally the same length. I wanted my finished shade to be 36 inches long so I just kept adjusting the pleats until both sides and the center measured 36 inches (and maybe some centimeters because, at that point, I didn’t care if it was perfect).
Once I got my pleats done, I hand stitched the top of each pleat to the layer of fabric just underneath it. I hand stitched each pleat in five places: one on each side and three evenly spaced stitches along the top of each pleat. That was a bit time consuming.
Then I inserted a wooden dowel into each pleat so that it rested at the bottom of the pleat, helping to give the bottoms of the pleats a straighter line when hung.
Once that was done, I was ready to hang my shade! Here’s where I failed to take pictures of the process, but I’ll try to explain the best I can.
I only glued the fabric to the top, back of the wooden piece so that I could get underneath the fabric in the front of the finished curtain and screw the entire wood piece directly into the wall. I had my hubby drill three holes in the wooden piece: one about two inches from each end and one in the center. Then I climbed up on the counter with my shade and a level and I held the shade in place (with a level sitting on top of it) while my hubby reached under the shade and drilled it into the wall through the pre-drilled holes and using wood screws. This was a pretty simple process, but it took four hands, for sure.
Anyway, here’s what she looks like! I love it! Now, what I can’t decide is if the combination of the roman shade and the fabric on the pendant lamp is too busy? What do you think?
Because I could change the pendant light to have a simple glass shade instead of the drum shade, like this:
Hmmm…I just can’t decide. Can you help a sister out?
Or…
Ok, this makes me want to bite the bullet and finally try the Roman shade thing. It looks smokin’ good! Oh, and I like option 2. I feel like it gives the fabric on the window shade the attention it deserves without having a competing pattern nearby.
+1 for Option 2, for the same reason, and the shade looks great!
I love your roman shade! Thank you so much for the tutorial. Just don’t know if I can tackle it cause I don’t have a sewing machine.
If you want the shade to be the feature, then I would go with option 2:)
Found you via your French chair remake posts (well done btw, must try this one day myself), and had to weigh in on the lamps. I like the shade myself, the balance it creates is great.
beautiful! I’m partial to #2
I’m your newest follower!
Love it! I am so glad I found you! I am now one of your followers! Yay! Hope you stop by and say hi sometime!
Window treatment looks great. I’m going to try it this weekend. I think the pendant shade needs to have more color contrast, but if I only have two choices, go with 2.