Tom was away this past weekend and I spread out my mess on the dining room table and got to work. Although I read all of the comments about the shades, I still went ahead and used blackout liner (even though most people where having trouble with this)- since the whole reason I wanted to replace the mini blinds was to minimize the light in his room. I thought I might have figured out what they were doing wrong :-) and I went ahead with another technique I came up with. It was all going along slowly but steadily and luckily, my friend Leslie came over and helped me do the math to figure out the number of folds for the shade -- just when I was about to loose steam.
I eagerly glued the shades together and hung them as soon as the glue hardened (hardly). I was so excited! They looked so cute in the window...until I tried to raise them. Uh-oh.
The shades were a crumpled mess - something my drapery guy would SHOOT me for hanging in my home!!! And they were sort of bent (the weight of the fabric + liner was too heavy to keep the cheap metal blinds straight) and let a lot of light in from the sides! Ikes, not functional or attractive.
Oh well... I have styled the heck out of them here and they look good (a cross between balloon and relaxed romans) in these pictures. These will have to do for now - until I can get more fabric and sew one, for real, this time.
Here is what I learned:
1) This tutorial is awesome - if you use really light fabric -like a see through linen - and don't have to apply a blackout liner. I really think it could work well and the directions were pretty easy to follow.
2) In my case, if I had been patient and made my own real fabric shades, I think they would function better than these since so much light streams from the sides.
3) Do it yourself projects are fun and exciting but you never know how they will turn out until they are finished.
Hope you had a fun and fruitful weekend!
