Our house is seriously lacking in the window treatment area. We did get black-out blinds right away for the kids' rooms so that they would sleep longer--is it too much to ask that they sleep past 6:00 am?! The rest of the windows are either bare or have temporary paper blinds.
I thought that I would like some Roman shades for the office, but didn't really want to deal with all the stringing and the hand sewing on of tiny rings. Plus my office window is quite wide and I wouldn't be able to buy fabric wide enough to cover it without making two matching shades. Enter Pinterest. A quick search found numerous tutorials for converting a cheap mini blind into faux Roman shades. After taking measurements, we headed to Lowes and Jo-Ann.
While I was unable to find really cheap mini blinds in the widths we needed, we did find not-so-bad customizable width mini blinds. I also got lucky and found some nice bamboo Roman shades on clearance (cheaper than my office blind project) that will fit my dining room windows. Hopefully I still like them once I take them out of the packages!
At Jo-Ann we chose a fabric and got black-out lining so that if need be we can use the room for a guest bedroom and I don't want the slats to show through the fabric. Also, the back of the mini blind/Roman shade in the tutorials is not very pretty. This is a large window right on the front of my house. I think if I line the shade with white, the white slats may be less noticeable on the outside of the house.
The tutorials I found all just glued the hems in the fabric. I will be sewing mine because I am not a fan of just gluing a hem. I will have to wing it a bit since none of the directions include any lining instructions. They are all glued, after all! I have about $60 in blinds and fabrics. Not bad for custom shades for a 5 ft x 6 ft window.
Here is the fabric we agreed upon:
The fabric is laying on top of a quilt top I just finished piecing. This was also a Pinterest project. Here's a link to the instructions. I was lazy and didn't iron after each seam. Don't make the same mistake! My top came out a little wavy. I know better.
One more project in the works, besides my ongoing doll clothes piecework projects and cutie pie & me doll clothes, is a pincushion. I have had my current pincushion for close to twenty years and it is just worn out. Pins fall out of it if it rolls over--it's a little turtle that's not very balanced. I want to make one in the "pinnie" style (on Etsy). However, instead of just stuffing it with fiberfill I want to add some emory to keep my pins sharper and to give it some weight. I can't find one pre made that I like, so I'm going to have to make one myself. I'm having a hard time deciding on a pair of fabrics. A few years ago I bought this fabric to make one. Since I can't decide on anything different, I will probably just use this fabric and call it good for now.
Yes, I work very slowly!! I'll share pictures of these projects as I complete them.
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