Roman Shades: Final Assembly

You have assembled your hardware, sewen your hems, and completed the tedious task of sewing on all of those little rings. Now you can put it all together. Yay! You will need a staple gun for this process. (I love staple guns!)

Remember that scrap fabric I told you to save? Pull it out now and cut some rectangles out of it that are approximately 2"x3". Wrap these around the end of your hardware board and staple into place, this will hide the board if your shades end up either a hair too short, or flapping in the wind when your window is open. You will likely have to remove the eye screw that is on the end for drawing up the shades, and then screw it back in through the fabric.

Attaching The Shade To The Hardware:

Now that we have our ends hidden, you'll need to decide which side of the window you want your draw cord to be on and then staple the top of your shade onto the top edge of your board. I started by stapling each end and then the middle and added another staple in between each staple until I felt that I had enough to keep it from sagging.



Adding Pull Cords:

Now lay your shade out on a flat surface and run your cords. Rather than cutting a random length and then trimming the cords down later, I ran my cords in through the pull eye-screw first, then through the eye-screw over the rings and down through each ring, tying it to the bottom ring. On my kitchen shade I then pulled enough cord off my spool to come about half way down the shade from the pull eye-screw.  Repeat with each row of rings. When all of the cords are run you can make sure they are all evenly tight (but the shade is still lose) and then tie a knot near the pull eye-screw.

With the dinning room shades I salvaged the cord condensers from the old shades and put that where the knot is. You can buy these in the craft store near the rings, if you chose to do that, only measure a couple of inches of cord past the pull eye screw.  Thread your cords into one half of the cord condenser and tie a knot, then tie a pull cord into the other half of the cord condenser and screw the cord condenser together.

Finishing Touches:

Slide your dowel into the bottom of the shade and your all set! I added a bead to the bottom of the cords for a nice touch and a little weight.

Roman Shades: Supplies and Hardware Construction
Roman Shades: Measuring and Cutting Your Fabric
Roman Shades: Hemming and Adding Rings
Roman Shades: Hardware Modification and No-Sew Methods