20 March 2012

Hand Made Roman Shades

Yes, I've been HOME-DECORing AGAIN! Not complaining....I do love it so. LOL. Besides, why would you pay designer prices for custom work when you can do it yourself?

One of my latest projects are these little beauties that I made for the four windows in the basement. They are called Top-Down, Bottom-Up (TDBU)Roman Shades and are offered by Terrell as a free project on her website. She also has a fabulous blog that I follow.

Terrell gives fabulous step-by-step instructions, provides a supplies calulator, and offers very reasonable prices on the hard to find supplies.

I did make a few alterations/modifications in my shades but that was only to suit my needs/wants for the space. I opted for inside mounting shades, which are 45W x 46L finished, including the piping/trim at the bottom. The valance is 45 1/2 W by 6 1/2 L and is lined, mounted on a tension rod, and does an nice job of finishing off the window as well as hiding the mounting hardware.

I love these shades because of the flexibility they offer. And even though we get great light in the basement, looking at the silver, metal in the window wells is not attractive at all!

Here we get to see the outdoors instead.


Here we can make adjustments to what we see.





As you can see, there is a header board which holds the eye screws and lifting/lowering strings.


Here you can see that the shades are fully lined and how they are strung.


The lines you see in the folds are plastic battens, which are used to not only lift and lower the shade but also to hold the shade's shape. I also like that the lining darkens just enough to filter and not to black out the light.


See how easy that was???? Please let me know if I've inspired you to make your own TDBU Roman Shades.

Until Next time...Happy Needling!!!

Gerry

1 comment:

Cathy said...

Well, I do love your TDBU shades, but I would never try it myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love to sew, just like I enjoy (or used to, when I owned one) playing the piano. But making these blinds would be like playing scales over and over, instead of creating something fun. :-) Hugs, C