no sew roman shades

When I started seeing (and pinning) a bunch of tutorials for turning old mini blinds into fabulous roman shades, I decided it was the perfect solution to my window treatment issues: I could replace the icky, dingy mini blinds in our master bedroom with something fancier and then repurpose one of them to dress up my bare kitchen window.

Once I finally picked out (and got my husband to install) the new shades for the bedroom, I got going on the kitchen one. And I love it!

Supplies:

• Mini blind that fits the window in question
• Fabric, sized to the length and width of your window (plus extra on each side for hem)
• Iron-on hem tape
• Fabric glue
• Scissors

To give credit where it is due: pretty much all of the tutorials out there seem to originate with this one from Jenny of the excellent Little Green Notebook. But after reading through a bunch of variations, I decided I wanted to do the hem tape variety, and I found this tutorial from Welcome to Heardmont to be easy to follow - check out the steps (with helpful photos!) there.

The version I pinned:

                                                                   Source: welcometoheardmont.com via Anne on Pinterest

And mine!

I just love this chipper print from Premier Prints so I immediately thought of it when it came time to pick something to make this shade. The only downside to it is that the slats can show through lighter fabrics. Some tutorials suggest adding a liner, but I don't really need the shade for shade, mostly just for looks. So I didn't bother with a liner since it will pretty much always be pulled up.

It's really an all-around win situation. My bedroom windows look like this instead of bent/permanently dusy mini blinds, the blinds got repurposed, and my naked kitchen window got dressed up, making that corner of the room a lot happier looking!