DIY: No Sew Faux Roman Shade

As many of you may know when it comes to sewing the main expert on that in this family is Jon! Last summer I tried to conquer the sewing machine and even made a couple of toss pillows, which came out great, but in the end me and the sewing machine decided we were better off as friends.

 

Which means I leave all of the sewing in the hands of my seamstress or my husband.

 

For weeks now I’ve had fabric sitting in my craft closet just waiting to be turned into a roman shade. Now for my seamstress to do it that would be around $130 bucks and Jon is not that handy to make one from scratch so I took matters in my own hands last night.

 

Here are my supplies:

- Iron

-Heavy Starch

-Spray Glue

-Stapler – That’s right an office stapler! I said no sewing!

-Striped Fabric

-White canvas fabric to use as a backing

-Scissors

-Ribbon Trim

-Hot Glue Gun

-Piece of wood cut to the size of your window

-Wooden or metal dowels

-Tape Measure

 

Step 1: Measure your window. My window was 34” wide so I added an extra two inches on each side and made sure I had a 38” wide piece of fabric. The length of it is up to you and how many folds you want to make. I made my piece 60” long.

 

Step 2:  Iron everything with heavy starch.

 

Step 3: Get a nice fold on each side of the shade and secure the white backing to your fabric with a light mist of spray glue.

 

* Before you spray glue measure you piece one more time and make sure that you still have the right the width. We had an extra 2” on each side to fold over.

 

 

Step 4: Start making your folds. Due to the heavy starch your fabric will be nice and stiff so it will help you make your folds. Once you find a size you like just staple away!

 

* Use a tape measure and make sure each of your folds are equal.

 

Here are my 4 folds all finished and individually stapled:

Step 5: Is optional. Since I had extra fabric I decided to wrap my mounting piece in fabric so that you didn’t see exposed wood on the sides of the shade.

 

 

Step 6 is attaching your faux shade to the mounting piece of wood. We had a bit of extra fabric so we decided that we just wanted the shade to cover 23” of the window. So that is where we stapled the shade to the wood.

 

Step 7: After stapling our faux shade to our mounting piece we realized we need a little bit more support in the folds so we stapled the folds to each other.

Step 8: We also added metal dowels to hold the space:

Step 9: To make sure our folds weren’t going anywhere we also flipped our shade over and spray glued each fold to the backing.

These folds aren’t going anywhere and we didn’t have to use a needle and thread anywhere!

 

Step 10: To hide our staples simply use a glue gun and add some decorative trim.

* Don’t you love my manicure? I got my nails done on Friday and come Monday night they were trashed.

 

Voila all finished! To hang you faux shade you can either use the mounting piece to screw it directly in your moulding or ceiling or pick up some L brackets and use that instead.

Here is a side shot:

We used existing hardware from an old shade we use to have in the space. I think I want it to lay a bit flatter to the window so we are going to mount it directly to the moulding this evening.

 

Because this is a faux roman shade it will not go up and down. This is not a problem, because we have a roller shade installed behind it that can easier be rolled up or down.

 

I know there are bunch of versions of faux roman shades, but I wanted one with absolutely no sewing, because for me even a straight line can be tricky. This fit the bill and works great in my space.