Saturday, February 18, 2012

Roman shades from old mini blinds

Here are my old broken, dirty mini blinds in my basement/work room. They look ready for the trash but thanks to my new favorite site, Pinterest, I got the idea to make them into Roman shades.






You will need fabric, mini blinds, and fabric glue/hot glue gun. Lay out the fabric and cut it the size needed. I measured the size of window and mini blind and added 2 inches to the width and 5 inches to the length. My shades were 55" long by 35" wide so I cut a rectangle that was 60" long by 37" wide.




Take the old mini shade and take the bottom clips off and untie the strings. Then clip the strings that hold the slats in place.


Remove all the slats and the bottom end. Lay the top and bottom of shade out to the length you want. Take the amount of slats needed to glue to shade. As you can see, my slats were dirty so I cleaned the ones that I needed and trashed the others.


I first serge all sides of my rectangle and then I sewed a one inch hem on the width sides. It is not necessary to hem the top or bottom of fabric if you serge it. Another option if you do not have a sewing machine is to use the iron on hem tape to finish the edges.


Lay out fabric and glue top part of shade to top of fabric using the fabric glue. I then hot glued the edge of fabric around the top. Measure from the top the distance that you want the slats. I put mine 10" apart using 5 slats but you might want to divide the length of your fabric by how many slats/folds you want on your shade. Put the pull strings through the holes on the slat before you glue to fabric. Attach the pull strings to the bottom end of shade and tie to correct length and insert the clips that you had removed.




Spread glue with brush to make it smooth then lay on fabric and press down. Make sure that you do not put glue over the holes so that the strings will be glued too. I found the glue dried quickly. When all slats are glued on, glue the end of shade to the bottom with fabric glue and then hot glue the edges up. They are now ready to hang!



The finished shades!
They pull up so nice and look great.


They pull down great too! I love them and my work room is starting to look really awesome. Now to paint!

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