Phew! What a week! It’s amazing how much stuff you can get done during a bloggy vacation when you set your mind to it. And because of it, I now have so much new stuff to share with YOU! The first of which is a DIY project I’ve been working on for several months but never had found the time to finish–DIY Roman Shades. Yes, this non-DIYer has once again stepped over that threshold and I’m pretty pleased with the results.
In the past I’ve shared a couple of posts about our sun room turned playroom. We are so thankful to have this area as a play area and home school room with one exception–the extreme light and heat factor. Up until now the windows have had no window treatments with which to regulate the sunshine. As such, even in the winter months we had to adjust our time in the sun room based on the location of the sun in the sky.
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| The sun room before it became a play room with a good view of the windows without shades. |
The windows in the sun room are not your typical width or height so buying cheap blinds at the home store wasn’t an option. We knew we’d have to go the customized route to create window coverage, but customized anything can cost a fortune. So, I looked into DIY options and came across this simple DIY Roman Shade tutorial by Jen Duncan. I gave it a try and the results are what you see below.
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| The shades pulled up. |
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| The shades down. |
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| The shades up and down. |
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| A close-up of the roman shades. |
We love them and are very pleased with how they turned out. The real nice thing about them–you only have to sew three seams and the rest is just sewing some rings by hand. No dowel rods. No sewing seams by hand. None of that extra pain-staking stuff. And, just like Jen says, after a few times they hold their shape pretty well. With the use of 40% and 50% coupons for Hobby Lobby we eventually were able to spend less than $200 for 11 custom shades…something that would have cost hundreds more if bought from the home store.
I won’t go into much detail as far as how we made these shades since Jen did does an excellent job on her website. However, if you decide to make these shades yourself, there are a few things I did slightly different than Jen which we found to be to our advantage:
1. We used metal rings from the bead department–so much cheaper.
2. Before you add the metal rings, drop your metal rod into the bottom of the shade. This saves you from having to cut and re-sew the shade later.
3. We didn’t use the staple gun at all and didn’t really find it necessary.
4. To keep the nylon cord from unraveling we slightly burned the ends.
5. We did a 3/4 inch seam allowance on each side (vs. 1/2″) and 5″ for added length (vs. 4″). This allowed me to have a 5/8 inch seam and extra space for ironing and human error (something I’m notorious for).
Now we can play in the sun room at any time of day; it’s great. So what projects have you been up to lately. Don’t forget, tomorrow is our first ever link up party! Hope to see you there and be sure to invite your friends too. I can’t wait!
