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Tuesday 25 February 2014

Faux Roman Blinds Tutorial

I finally made the roman blinds for our powder room (that I bought the fabric 2-1/2 years ago for!) 



I started by determining what size my finished curtain needed to be. The overall finished dimensions of my curtains were 28"W x 13"H.

We get a lot of directional light coming through the window, and even though these blinds are faux, I added a layer of black-out lining to them as I didn't want any streams of light coming through the fabric. You could probably get away with a dim-out lining but I had some black-out lining that I picked up from Fabricland for super cheap a while back, so I used that.

I figured I needed around 1m of material for the height and all the folds of the blinds, but I honestly didn't measure that part. 

I then put the fabric and lining together and left about 1" of fabric around the lining in order to make a 1/2" seam.


I folded the seam in once, once more over and pinned in place.



You could probably press your seams after pinning or, like me, just sew away!




After I sewed the first hem, I realized I should have pinned the lining to the fabric to avoid shifting. You may want to pin before you start sewing the hems. 




I continued to sew all the way around until all the seams were complete. Remove the pins and press with iron.




For the folds: I really just started folding it how I wanted it to look - not really measuring anything out. I knew that I needed all the folds where the dowels would sit at the back to gather at the same place, so I just started folding. 




After getting the folds to the look I wanted, I adjusted them slightly based on the overall height of the finished curtain. 


To keep the curtains straight, I used a 1/4" dowel. Since I wanted to make these dowels removable (for washing purposes), I used pieces of elastic to hold them in place.


I just used some hot glue and glued them along the folds that I noted above.


Once all the dowels were in place, it was ready to start folding together!


Since I didn't have any non-silk ribbon, I just cut some strips of cotton fabric (the cotton will allow the ties to hold and not slip away like silk ribbon would). I attached the fabric by using a dot of glue just above the top dowel.


I then fed the fabric strips through all the dowels, allowing them to gather at the same place.


Then I tied the cotton strips together, allowing the dowels to be held in place when the blind is hung.


To attach the the blinds to the wall, I used a scrap piece of wood laminate that measured the width of my curtains (28"). 

I wrapped it in the same fabric as my curtains so it will just hide once on the wall.


I then glued velcro to both the board and curtain. You could probably be fancier than me and sew the velcro on, but my trusty glue gun worked just fine for me. 


Thanks to my handy hubby, we installed it in no time!



I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out! 


Stay tuned for the rest of the powder room makeover!


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