Roman Shades: Hemming and Adding Rings

Hemming:

I have found the most important step in hemming is pressing. If you don't have an iron and ironing board, buy one. When you press a hem, you know it is going to keep it's shape as you sew. I have tried to skip this step, and the results weren't pretty.

Pressing:

Preheat your iron to the appropriate setting for your fabric. Lay your fabric out on your ironing board, right side down and fold your hem over at the end, using a ruler to check the width. If you have added 2" to each side for your hem, fold the entire 2" over. Press the measured area with your iron. Don't try to eyeball this step, you'll most likely end up with uneven hems, which really show once you hang your shades. Just continue down the edge of your fabric, measuring and then pressing.

Once you have completed pressing over your full 2" you will want to let the fabric cool so that the press can set it. After it is cooled you will want to unfold the press, and then fold the edge of the fabric in to just about the crease. If you fold it too tight it won't want to lay nicely when you fold the whole thing in again. Then again press this fold all the way along your fabric. Fold the hem all the way closed, press one more time and pin. You should now have a nice neat hem that is ready to sew.

Sewing:

Sewing your hems with a machine is going to be your quickest and most accurate route to go, but if you hand sew your hem you can almost completely hide your stitches. In this case I will show how I machine stitched my hems, at a later date I will add a post and link it here showing you how to hand sew a hem. When machine sewing a hem you'll want to stay as close as possible to the fold that is on the inside of the shade, and make sure to stitch your bottom hem last, and leave the ends open so that you can slide in the dowel when you add your fabric to the hardware. The size of the stitch you use is completely up to you. I used my longest straight stitch setting on my machine so as to match the stitching that was already on the shades as well as possible. I probably would have used it anyway because my fabric is a bit heavier and may have puckered if I had used too small or too tight of a stitch.

Adding The Rings:

First you need to decide how far apart you want your rings to be. If you space them out every 8", you will have 4" wide folds of fabric. For both my kitchen and dinning room shades I went with 8" spacing. For your first section up from the bottom you are going to measure up 1/2 of you spacing plus one inch.

Fold your shade with the wrong side out, measuring up your distance from the bottom (in my case 5") and press the fold with an iron. Fold the shade with the wrong side out again and measure your distance between folds (8" for me) and press again. Continue like this until you get near the top.

For your last section you will probably have some other amount of fabric left than your measurement you have been using. Don't worry. I had about 5" left on my kitchen shade and it makes a nice little ballooning when drawn up all the way, and with my dinning room shades I had about 11", the extra 3" is taken up for the most part in wrapping around the top of the board and hanging in front of it. I wouldn't add one more fold unless you will have at least 5" of fabric above the last fold.

Once you have all of your folds pressed you can measure in from the edge of the shade the same distance you have the screw eyes from the edge of the board and mark the spot with a pin, and sew your rings on. As far as I know there is no way other than hand sewing to attach the individual rings. However, you can purchase rings pre-sewn on a strip of fabric that you can sew on with sewing machine using a zipper presser foot. There are two downsides to the pre-sewn strips. First, you can't chose how far apart you want your rings to be. Second, it costs allot more than individual rings.

Roman Shades: Supplies and Hardware Construction

Roman Shades: Measuring and Cutting Your Fabric

Roman Shades: Final Assembly

Roman Shades: Hardware Modification and No-Sew Methods

Roman Shades: Measuring and Cutting Your Fabric

Sorry this post won't have pictures because I spaced out and forgot to take any last night when I cut down my old curtains. When I cut the fabric for the last shade I will try to remember to take and post some pictures.

Figuring Out Your Measurements:
So you need to know what size to cut your fabric. First you will need to decide what size hem you want on the shades. I typically prefer to do an even 1" inch hem on each side (1" being the part of the hem you see), and without a lining I need to fold that same amount under so I add 2" to the measurement. This allows for a nice drape, plenty of room in the bottom hem for the dowel and a little more structure around the edges than a smaller hem would provide. (Right now I am using a smaller hem but that is because I'm re-purposing old curtains and rather than rip out the 1/2 " hem I'm using it as much as I can, and matching it on the sides I needed to cut. Because I am using a smaller hem overall, I have to add a 1" channel into my bottom hem so that I can slide my dowel in.)

So if you are going to use a 1" hem you need to add 2" to each side of the shade, so a total of 4" in each direction. Also we need to add an extra 1" of length to account for the part of the shade that is going to wrap around the top of the hardware board and be stapled into place. So that means that we are at 4" added to width and 5" added to height. (remember to use the width of your board as your starting width.)

As an example my kitchen window was 35" wide by 35.25" tall. I wanted the width of my fabric to be the 35"+4" for hem giving me 39". Height was 35.25"+5" for the hem and the board wrap giving me 40.25". So my fabric for my kitchen window needed to be cut down to 39" by 40.25"

Cutting The Fabric:
I have a hard time cutting fabric in a straight line, so I typically buy cotton. I love the ease and speed of being to measure in one direction snip the fabric and just tear it knowing it will go in a straight line. But, cotton isn't always ideal for making shades or curtains because it is so thin. Also, since I'm re-using the old curtains, I don't have a choice in fabric this time, polyester it is.

I cut a straight line in the fabric by first laying it out as flat as I could on the floor (I have no other surface in my house that I can lay a full curtain out completely flat without worrying about cutting something under the fabric). I then took my tape measure and measured from the edge over and marked my cut line with a straight pin. I moved the tape measure up about 5" and measured and pined again. I repeated this across my fabric. I then cut along from one pin to the next, pulling the pins as I went along.

Save your scraps from cutting the fabric, you will need some of them later.

Roman Shades: Supplies and Hardware
Roman Shades: Hemming and Adding Rings
Roman Shades: Final Assembly
Roman Shades: Hardware Modification and No-Sew Methods

Roman Shades: Supplies and Hardware Construction

Ok, so this is only my second attempt at making Roman Shades. The first one I liked the look of, but I will be making some changes to how I made it too as I work on the ones for my dinning room. so please don't take my word as law, as I am kinda making it up as I go along. I am posting this on here because everything that I can find as to directions are so vague or incomplete that I figured I might be able to helps someone (and I had a girlfriend ask me to tell her how to make shades)

Supplies:

Fabric (I'm using old curtains)

Plastic Rings

Drapery Cord

Thread to Match Fabric

Normal Sewing Supplies

1/4 inch dowel

1x2 board

screw eyes

(the last two create your hardware, with this setup you won't have a cord stop. So if that bit is important to you, you"ll have to order a hardware kit)
Measuring how much fabric you'll need

I purchased the screw eyes, board and dowel at the hardware store, cost half as much as buying it at the craft store.

I know some people are curious as to how much the supplies cost. People make stuff themselves so that they can get them for cheaper right? Well that's not always the case. If you aren't interested in cost just skip over the next paragraph.

My supplies so far cost as such: the 1x2 board which was 8 foot long was about 75cents. The 1/4 inch dowel was in the area of 70cents. The screw eyes were about $1 for a package of 10. The package of 24 plastic rings was about $4. I chose to purchase a package of 24 yards of drapery cord because I knew I would be using that much, and it cost about $7, I believe it was in the area of 40cents a yard if purchased by the yard. The thread was $2.50 a spool. So my supplies (other than the fabric which I'm re-purposing) was about $15.95. Keep in mind that one package of cord, rings, and screw eyes will do more than one shade so the supplies cost will go down a little bit if you are making more than one. I will try to remember to figure out my total cost when I am done so that I can break it down to a per-shade cost.

Hardware Construction:

You can skip this part if you choose to order a hardware kit, or rather I should say you would follow the directions on the hardware kit. I chose to save money and build my own, even though I won't have a fancy cord stop, and will have to wrap the cord around a cup hook. The sacrifice was worth the $15-$20 savings.

Measure your window. If you want the shade to hang past the window, measure how far outside the window you want the shade to go. If you want he shade to hang inside the window, measure inside the window, but keep in mind you need somewhere to screw the 1x2 board into. I chose to hang my shades inside the window because my husband and I have gorgeous wood work in our home that I don't want to cover. Once I had that measurement I subtracted 1/2 inch, just so I know things won't fit too snugly, and the 1/2 will only leave 1/4 open space on each size.

Once you have your measurement, cut the 1x2 to length, and cut the dowel to about 1/2" shorter so that it fits nicely in the channel at the bottom on your shades. If you don't have a saw some hardware stores will cut your lumber down for you, just make sure you measure your windows before you go shopping.

Next you will need to drill pilot holes for the screw eyes and for hanging the shade. The whole for hanging the shade will go into the 2" side of the board and the holes for the screw eyes will go into the 1" side. Your screw eyes are going to have to be directly over your rings, so it is important to measure for them. I have 3 narrow windows (25 inches) so I put one 2 inches in from each side on those. On my wider window (43 inches) I put three, one 2 inches in from each end and a third in the middle. Also you will need one close to whichever end you want to have the cord come out of. That one I put about 1/2 inch in (measurement isn't as important on this one because it doesn't line up with a row of rings.)
Make sure the size your pilot holes correspond to the size of screws you are using. if the whole is too small the screw won't go in easily enough, and if it is too large the threads of the screw won't be able to grab the board.

Finally you can add your screw eyes to your pre-drilled holes. I screwed mine in until you couldn't see the shaft anymore. I just took the picture between getting as far as I could with my hands and starting to twist them with a pliers.

Now your hardware is completed!

Roman Shades: Measuring and Cutting Your Fabric

Roman Shades: Hemming and Adding Rings
Roman Shades: Final Assembly
Roman Shades: Hardware Modification and No-Sew Methods