Wanna-Be Working Roman Shades {DIY}

I am eagerly waiting the arrival of our window coverings. We decided to have blinds professionally ordered (we went with the company Rockwood Shutters + Blinds, who is available through Home Depot, everything is made in the USA and I think it is a woman owned business...) the only "problem" is that everything is measured and cut to fit exactly into every window, so it's taken a little time. We toyed with getting shutters, but in the end, I'm just way to cheap...I don't think I will regret my decision, but it was hard to pick window coverings. 

Because we had all of the bedrooms and main living spaces taken care of, there are very few windows that require attention...and those are in the bathrooms. 

I decided after seeing a few pins {thisthis, this, and this} that I was going to attempt to make my own roman shades, that actually work!! It only cost about $10-$12  (include the trim) it was a relatively quick project, although I really didn't have any clue about what I was doing, I think they came out pretty nicely! 


To start with I purchased the cheapest vinyl blinds I could find from Walmart (about $3) and I measured my window opening, only needing about 1.5 yards of fabric, which I purchased from Hobby Lobby for about $6 (navy blue Canvas Duck fabric)

I created a rectangle, about 2" larger on all sides than the window opening. 

I folded over the edges, and sewed them all down. Leaving me with this: 


I prepared the vinyl blinds by removing the vinyl slats, but keeping ALL of the string. I used the instructions from Little Green Notebook on how to do this step. 

Once I removed all of the vinyl slats, I used the remainder of my blinds as a template, and marked little white chalk marks everywhere I needed to place a ring (about every 10")


Then I sewed on the little plastic rings (I also got at Walmart for maybe $2?) That took the longest time, maybe an hour or so. I used clear string that I had on hand, sewing through each plastic loop ring about 5 times. 

Then I hot glued the fabric to the front of the vinyl blinds mounting bar...just across the front, careful to not get any glue on the strings. I left about 1" of fabric above the mounting bar.

But....then I hung up the curtain and it looks like THIS when I pulled the string: 



{almost a craft fail???}

There was just not enough heft to neatly lift all of that fabric without looking like a ratty mess.

Back to the drawing board...

I decided to glue pieces of the vinyl blind to the back of the canvas using my hot glue gun.

I just lined up the vinyl blind on UNDER the strings of the blind that were through the loops. It looked like this:


By adding the vinyl slats, it gave the fabric enough support to look like THIS when I pulled on the string:

{ahhh, much better!}

I decided to add some orange polka dot ribbon, hot glued on, of course....


This is how it looks when the string is pulled:


Not too bad for just a few bucks, right?!


 I will add that we have extremely high ceilings and tall windows. I did hang the mounting bracket (that came with the blinds) on the wall about 6-10" above the top of the window (I think?) and I've had it up for a few weeks, everything seems to be holding just fine.

I don't know if the glue would hold if I was opening and closing this blind every day, multiple times a day. I'd be curious if anyone tries this, what you find....












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