Easy Roman Shade Tutorial- Using Old IKEA shade

Easy Roman Shade Tutorial Using an Old Ikea Roman Shade

This is the before… Old white IKEA Roman shades that Tiff had for years! We were going to make new shades from scratch using her new fun bright and bold fabric but I figured out a way to use the old shades as the lining and using the old hardware 

CHA CHING!  FREE! and  LESS WORK!  

Step 1- Removing old hardware

Remove old hardware: Take apart the top of the old shade by unscrewing the eye hooks and removing wood bar.

Step 2- Layout New Fabric

 Layout desired fabric pretty side face down. Lay the old shade on top of pretty fabric with cords and hardware side facing up. 

Step 3 Cutting the Fabric 

Cutting Fabric: We cut the fabric to allow for turned in sides and a large hem. Cutting the fabric about 26″ wide and 76″ long gave us enough fabric to create a pocket for the wooden bar and roll up and plenty for a nice large hem.

Step 4- Making nice edges for our Easy Roman Shade

Step 5 -The top of the Roman Shade Pocket

 To create the top of the Roman shade pocket first you need to made a small 1/4″ hem. Take both the pretty fabric and the old roman shade fabric and fold under 1/4″ hem. Iron until smooth. Place old wooden bar on the fabric and roll up and over the wooden bar.

(This is how to get the correct measurement for a pocket)

 Remove the wood bar, pin in place and sew across the entire shade to create a pocket for the wooden stick to slide in. Note: Mark on your fabric where the holes are in the wooden bar so you can replace the eye screws once the fabric has been sewed.

If you forget to mark the spots you can kind of feel around for the holes with your fingers and stick the eye screw back in and twist tightly.

**** MAKE SURE you put the wooden bar side with multiple holes on the side where you want all the the cords to gather to pull the shade up and and down.  We chose to bring all the cords to the right side for both shades. 

Step 6- Creating The Hem For the Easy Roman Shade

Tiff wanted her Roman shades to hang a lot longer than the old ones so we made sure the hem would be nice and long. When we originally cut the fabric we made sure we would have enough to turn the fabric under 1/4″ on the edge and then fold the fabric up 4″ until it met the end of the old shade. Pin and stitch in place.

Step 7- Replace Eye Screws and Thread Cords

Screw in the eye screws and re-thread the cords and you are done!!

Or so we thought but when we tried to pull the cords to get it to fold up we noticed it was heavier than it was originally so Tiff added a third cord and another eye screw to the center.

 Use a very large needle and some cording…stitch it up through the center using the same areas as the old cording..it took maybe a minute to do this. 

We bought small “L” shaped hooks to attach it to the door 

TA DA!!! So dang cute!!

Tiff is thrilled with her new Roman Shades that cost practically nothing!! 

The Colorado sun has bleached the trim on the doors…we need to paint!