Roman Shades

The other day when I was looking at Apartment Therapy's blog I saw a link to a tutorial on making roman shades with mini blinds. I had been searching for some roman shades to go in the master bathroom but had not had any luck with finding what I had in mind. I had been looking for some neutral colored fabric that had a linen or burlap texture. I had looked into making my own but my sewing machine has been on the fritz and I have lots of other house projects going on to devote time to sewing and constructing my own. When we bought the house there were large slat aluminum blinds in the master bathroom. They were fairly dingy and I wasn't crazy about having blinds in the bathroom because I like to have the window exposed during the day. (I realize I could pull the blinds up, but then they're bunched up at the top). So when I saw this super simple tutorial I was stoked.

Here is the link to the tutorial on ScoutieGirl's blog. I'm not even going into all the steps (there were just 5) because she did a great job explaining.

All you need is a pair of mini blinds, or in my case, the large slat blinds that I had fortunately not thrown away yet, some fabric, and some fabric glue. Yes, that's right just glue, NO SEWING!!

(The picture makes the blinds look whiter than they really were)

Here's my new shade!
Rolled down:
The last picture was taken while some of the glue was still a little wet. There aren't any spots on them now.

Now I can bathe in privacy! Yes, we didn't have anything covering the window since we've moved in. Don't worry though, our bathroom window is too high to peak into and it's set back far enough on the house that anyone driving by can't see in.

If you're looking for some shades then I highly recommend making them this way. It took me about 45 minutes to make these and 30 minutes of that was the drying time.