Move over, Salma Hayek and Uma Thurmon. I shan’t be jealous of your european love affairs. I’ve got a Roman in my life. A shady Roman … a Roman Shade!
And move over Martha Stewart! ’Cause I didn’t buy these shades at Pottery Barn nor from Etsy seamstress nor from Nashville curtain maker. Sure didn’t. I MADE THEM. You read that right, folks, I made 2 roman shades totally from scratch for my very favorite little breakfast nook. And I think they look quite lovely, if I do say so myself.
I don’t know what it is that makes me want to pull out the sewing machine every so often. Sometimes I imagine there is this huge wad of creativity inside of me but there’s some part of my occasionally overly practical brain that keeps it from flowing free. Sewing is the right balance of creation and structure to keep my twisted self smiling. Or maybe it’s just because I’m Southern. Whatever the reason, I find it super gratifying to sew something up every now and then. And this time I might have just made myself a new full-time hobby since my hubby Will LOVES how this turned out and now wants Roman shades for practically every room in our house. He even took all of the measurements this morning! We’ll see how far I make it with this sewing thing.
But first, dear readers, lest you be thinking that it’s time to abandon this blog because “Julia has just gotten WAY too complicated for me”, I’d like to enlighten you on how totally easy this is. If you have a clue about how to use a sewing machine, you could do this project. There is no pesky welting to cover (that is a pain in the a$$), no perfect corner to achieve, no curved line, no complex measuring. Below I’m going to hit the highlights of just to show you that this isn’t that big of a deal. If you decide to take this on for yourself, I recommend buying Sewing for the Home which runs you through all of the detail on this project and many others.
Step 1: Measure, Plan and Gather
As recommended by Sewing for the Home, I measured the inside of my window and sketched out the finished product, calculating both the finish size and the cut size of my fabric. I wrote down all of the notions I would need and the amounts and took this list with me to the fabric store. My first tip to project success? Let the store associates calculate the fabric repeat and resulting total yardage. They will do a much better job of this than you could and you’ll be sure you have everything you need before you start sewing. Then, start gathering up your supplies.
Below you’ll see Sewing for the Home, my sketch and measurement paper which I referred to all the time, a cardboard cutting and measuring board (INDISPENSABLE!), decorator fabric and black-out lining. I chose black out lining because when my decorator fabric is held up to the light, you would most definitely see the ring tapes running up the center of it and I didn’t want that distraction. Smaller windows wouldn’t require ring tapes up the center so regular old lining would do.
You’ll also need (starting from the upper left) drapery cord, 5″ ring tape, and sharp scissors. I actually found my rolling cutter to be pretty worthless for this project so I didn’t even use it!
Next up, the hardware. You need as many eye hooks as you have rows of rings. For me, it was 4 per shade. Home Depot only sold small ones as hook and eye combos (think screen door latch) so I had to buy that. You’ll need awning cleats to fasten to your window frame to keep the shades in place when the are pulled up. And you’ll need corner brackets to hang the shades.
You’ll need a weight rod for each shade (the book spells out the diameter and your fabric store can probably custom cut them to the length you need – mine did!), and a mounting board for each shade (cut to length before I even left Home Depot). And for heaven’s sake, get yard stick. It makes life SO much easier.
Step 2: Cut
You’ll cut decorator fabric to match the inside dimension of your window + seam allowances (all spelled out in Sewing for the Home – no math required!) and you’ll cut lining to match the inside dimension of your windows with no seam allowances. Then you’ll cut a strip of fabric called a facing that’s 5 inches tall and 2 inches wider than your finished shade. That’s all the cutting you do!
Step 3: Pin Together & Sew Facing
Next you’ll pin your side seams in place and press them with an iron. Then you’ll take the lining and slip it under the side seams and repin. You can see a few little pin heads down the left and right sides of the picture below. You will sew on the facing strip, turn under a seam, then sew 2 straight lines to make the rod pocket. Your weight rod slips right in there.
Step 4: Pin and Sew Ring Tapes
Next you’ll measure the position of your ring tapes and use your yard stick to draw a line for where they go. You want to make sure the rings are perfectly in horizontal line. This is another spot where the cardboard measuring tool and yard stick are insanely helpful. You’ll want to pin the heck out of those suckers because they are squirrely little things and if you don’t they’ll move around all over the place under your sewing machine presser foot. But if you pin them at each ring and in between each ring, the sewing part is really easy work. Check out all those pins!
Step 5: Prep and attach the mounting board
Next you’ll mark an X above each row of ring tape and drill a little hole for your eye hook in your mounting board. Then, you attach the mounting board to the decorator fabric and lining with a staple gun. Now you are ready to screw in your eye hooks and get to threading!
Step 6: Thread your cords and hang!
Now all that is left is to thread the cords and hang your curtain. The threading part is very well explained in the book. But in a nutshell, you thread one column at a time, starting by tying off the cord at the ring closest to the weight bar at the bottom. You go all the way up the row, and then across each eye hook at the top. You’ll want to decide which side of the window will hold your awning cleat in advance and thread the cords to end in that direction. It’s so crystal clear in the book.
La voila! Let’s close this post with a few more beauty shots. Yay!
Will and I got engaged in November of 2007 on a magical European vacation with our families. The day of our engagement, we opened up a bottle of champagne in celebration and I’ve been saving our treasured cork ever since.
Er, um, ok so that’s not exactly how it went. We did get engaged on a wonderful Mediterranean cruise with our families. And we did open a bottle of champagne not long after Will popped the question. And I did save the cork. And then I lost it 36 hours later. But, in true glass-half-full style, we just used that as an excuse to order more champagne and do more celebrating. ;)
But what to do with them? I came up with an idea that I think is totally genius. Christmas ornaments! Don’t you love to go through the ritual of pulling out your Christmas ornaments each year and remembering who gave them to you or who made them for you or where you bought them? Well now you can remember those special occasions by immortalizing your champagne cork as a festive ornament for your tree. Here’s how:
Champagne Cork Ornament
1.) Start with a clean, dry cork with the muselet still attached.
The muselet is the wire cage that secures the cork to the bottle (I just learned that term tonight – fancy, eh?). If you want to work with a wine cork that naturally does not have a muselet, you might try threading some fishing line on a needle and pushing it through the cork. I haven’t tried this, but it seems like it would work.
2.) Shape a bow using some cute, festive ribbon.
I chose ribbon that’s Christmas-y but it would be just as cute to match the ribbon to the occasion. So if you opened a bottle of champagne on the day your baby girl was born, make it pink. It it was the day your hubby got into business school, find ribbons in colors that match the program.
3.) Shape a bow, don’t tie a bow.
I’m using grosgrain ribbon here and it doesn’t exactly make the most gorgeous bow because the ribbon has so much body. But it’s just too darn cute to pass up. So, I shaped the two “ears” and two “tails” of the bow and pinched it with my fingers.
Then I used a stretch of fishing line to tightly cinch the center of the bow. Next, I used a 1-inch long stretch of ribbon and a little crazy glue and covered up my fishing line. Grosgrain ribbon will fray so don’t forget to singe any loose ends with a lighter so that the fibers melt together just a bit.
4.) Attach the bow.
Bend the muselet back to make a little spot for the bow to rest. Give it just enough room so it’s snug. I added a little crazy glue to the cork right where the bow would fit to keep it extra snug.
5.) Make it hang-able.
I used some fishing line to make a loop through the ring of the muselet so it can be hung from the tree! Our tree is already down for the year so here it is, hanging from a nail in my office wall. Trust me, this will be WAY cuter once it has a Christmas tree limb to dangle from.
I’m going to try to remember to do this as a follow up from showers, weddings, engagement parties, New Year’s Eve parties, and the like. Wouldn’t it be such a fun idea to steal a cork from a party you attend and surprise the guest of honor with a little momento at Christmastime? I could kick myself for not nabbing a cork from an engagement party I went to this weekend.
One of my favorite blogs, Young House Love, does a similar application with the chop sticks from their ritual New Year’s Eve dinner. You can read about that here. They also mention framing their old house keys in that post but wouldn’t old house keys make great Christmas ornaments too? Maybe with a sweet little hand-written label that gives the address of a much-loved house and the years that you made memories there. Such a fun thing to pull out every holiday season.
So Corks for Christmas – totally a Julia Original! Enjoy!
I’ve always envisioned myself as a domestic goddess. In my early 20′s when my friends were reading Cosmo, I was reading Martha Stewart Living. When dinners at their house were pizza delivery, dinner at mine was Chicken Divan casserole with homemade fudge pie.
In those years, I learned that the creative and hospitable genius I envisioned myself as was rarely the reality. One particular project, an upholstered headboard, suffered dreadfully from an impulse fabric change from neutral and beautiful to bold and busy, not to mention my mediocre-at-best sewing skills. I can now admit that it was super ugly and a total failure. But I chose to live with that thing in my master bedroom for 4 years, rather than shatter my self-imposed identity as the next Martha.
Now that I’m married and living in my dream house, I still seek out opportunities for creativity at home. Decorating, entertaining, gardening, and an occasional craft project are my favorite ways to pass my free time. But since the mistakes of those early years I’ve become a copy cat. I won’t settle for that shitty headboard anymore, I want real beauty, durability, and creativity in my home life and I want the finished product to look like it was done by a professional.
So, I steal good ideas and take all the credit.
This blog is where I’ll out my secrets and share the tear-outs, links, pics of friends’ and stranger’s houses, etc that I rip off. You’ll see pics of the outcome when I attempt the project all by myself. And since my ultimate goal is to create my own ideas for beauty and functionality in my home, I’ll walk you through my journey from ideas ripped off, to ideas inspired by what I see, to ideas that are all my own. I’ll occasionally post tallies from the “Ripped Off”, “Inspired” and “Julia Originals” tags to track my progress.
They say imitation is the best form of flattery. I’ve flattered before and I’ll flatter again. But hopefully this blog will help direct my journey to originality. I look forward to your feedback!
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