Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Roman Shade No Sew Slipcover Secret

 
A pale blue silk roman shade hangs in my bedroom alcove.
I have a little secret to share:  
this roman shade used to be in a darker blue cotton paisley fabric by Waverly.
I had it custom made for this room 4 years ago.
Roman shades are labor intensive and so the cost is high in a workroom.
Did you know it costs more for a roman shade 
than for a pair of floor length draperies?
I wanted to keep the roman but I didn't want to pay 
my workroom to fabricate a new one,
 or even make a new one myself (!), since this one was functioning perfectly fine. 
Here is a no-sew trick you can use to update your romans.Remove the roman shade from the mounting bracket and lay it flat.
Lay out the new fabric to cover it and give yourself several inches on all sides.
Here is the aqua silk I wanted for my new bedroom makeover.
 Cut your new piece of fabric and iron it.
 Fold over side and bottom hems and use some Stitch Witchery 
bonding tape to hold your hems in place.
Insert the bonding tape and iron...Hot glue the side hem of the new fabric to the existing roman shade edge.
You can see the little roman shade rings and cord.
 I rest my glue gun on a piece of cardboard.
Lay the roman over a table or an ironing board to 
make sure the cover fabric is fitting properly
 as you attach the side hems with the glue gun.
You will attach the top of the fabric to the 
Roman mounting board with staples, right over the old fabric.
  
Just looks like a flat piece of fabric here, but there is a roman shade underneath.
A light line of hot glue affixes the face fabric to the shade.
The new fabric should be slightly larger than the old fabric when it is finished.
The shade is sideways here..the rings all end at the bottom of the shade.
It is all glued around the edges. A pretty piece of trim is added at the bottom of the shade for a little bling.
This is optional. You can add fringe or leave it plain.Now the shade is ready to be popped back into the mounting brackets.
This is a quick fix to perk up an outdated look and it operates perfectly!
These treatments are not washable anyway, so using glue isn't an issue.
I don't like the folds of my romans to go up in perfect lines.
I like them messy and crunchy looking,
 however if you want them to pull up in straight tailored folds it does that too.
When I close my roman at night I see the pretty trim at the bottom.
Voila!
A shade with a secret past.