In a previous post I wrote about my friend Shelley’s handmade blue toile pillow that fit perfectly in our new family room.
Well, years ago she made a gorgeous black and white toile window treatment that hung in her kitchen. Now that she’s moving on to new decor and a new house, I begged to have inquired about that window treatment fabric. She gave it to me!
Here’s my tutorial for making a faux roman shade from a piece of fabric. In this case, I started with two pieces of fabric that Shelley had sewn together. You can see that the back is a pretty green striped material.
Her window was 50″ wide and mine only 39″ so I centered the design and marked where my cuts would be to bring it down to size.
My initial plan was to use fusible bonding tape and iron the edges for a finished look. This has worked many times for me even with the thickest upholstery fabric. BUT, in this case the bonding tape wasn’t strong enough for the double thickness of the two pieces of fabric sewn together. After many tries I gave up and pulled out the ol’ needle and thread. (Mind you I have no sewing machine and very limited skills in the sewing department.)
Can you see the faint stitch lines along the edge of the fabric? It wasn’t quick but it worked. And actually I ended up preferring the sewn approach because it allows the fabric edges to fall more naturally in the finished piece than if it had the hard line of the fused tape method.
After I had cut the fabric and sewn the first edge I hung it up just to make sure the width was right before I stitched the other edge.
I used a metal wide-pocket curtain rod from Lowe’s ($7) and hung it 4 inches protruding from the wall to provide some depth. Okay, in truth my hubsy hung it for me. 
Yep, looked good.
Then I folded the fabric to look like a roman shade. I tried a few different times until I got the width of the folds to my liking.
Next comes my super-special-secret-sauce-surprise for all my fellow no-sew-ers out there.
SAFETY PINS!
The pins hide so well in all the folds of fabric that you can use as many as you like until the shade hangs just the way you want.
I ended up using about 45 pins by the time I was done!
And here’s the finished piece!
Here’s a look at the kitchen window before…
And after!
See that I hung the shade as high as possible so that it barely intrudes on the window space? That is THE most important principle of window treatments! Always, always, always, hang your window treatments high and leave as much exposed window glass as possible to let in as much light as you can. It also raises the perceived height of the room.
Send me some more inspirations for no-sew safety pin projects!