Making a Roman blind

December has flown by and I have so much to update you on. For starters I managed to finish the Roman blind for our back door!On the 1st December I decided to dedicate the day to finishing the blind and putting the blind up.

Since then I have spent some time reflecting on the process of making the Roman blind, it really was one of the most challenging things I've ever attempted. The size of the project was huge and I dealt with three pieces of fabric measuring over 1m wide and almost 3m long. This meant rearranging the furniture in our lounge so I had a flat surface to work on. Luckily our floor is wooden so I managed to do the majority of the fabric pressing on the floor. I think the hardest thing was ensuring all of the measurements were accurate and the fabric remained straight and the seams were in line with the blue ticking stripes. I spent the majority of the time measuring, pressing and pinning and not much time sewing, that was the easy bit!

I do plan to share with you how I made my own Roman blind in another blog post in the next month or so, I just want to test out my instructions again when I make the second blind.

Here is my ta dah moment...my first Roman blind!

I love the fabric, the blue and white stripes go so well with our terracotta walls and other blue and white parts of our lounge and our teal sofa. I'm going to buy a pretty cord drop and a nicer looking cleat than came in the Roman blind kit to finish off the project properly. I'm really proud that I stuck with the project and completed it before the new year.

Roman blinds :: The project has started at last!

As winter is just around the corner I've been gradually adding a few new things to our home to make it even more cosy! I've been making a few cushions, have started a crochet blanket and last week our new scandi style striped rug arrived. This meant that I could finally make a start with the Roman blind project I have been planning for some time. I needed to wait until the rug arrived before I could make the final selection of the fabric and match the colours for the Roman blinds I am making for the same room. It has started to feel quite a bit colder in the evenings with a few nights recently edging closer to zero, so this gave me the push I needed to start.

Last weekend I finally made a start with the Roman blind for the back door. The fabric I'm using is a wide ticking navy fabric from John Lewis. I headed off to John Lewis on Saturday morning with my measurements and bought enough material for the two Roman blinds that I'm making, plus the lining and interlining. The sash window and door are really draughty so I need to make quite thick blinds.

I am making my own handmade Roman blinds for our home using a kit but the instructions have been a little limited! I've had to buy a few extra things, such as Roman Blind Tape and cord as the amount in the kit wasn't enough. Our door has a window above it making it taller than any of the Roman blind kits I could find. The poor instructions included the kit have meant to I have spent some time reading lots of websites with how-to's, looking in books and watching videos on YouTube to pull together an idea of how to make Roman blinds.

While I'm making the blinds I'm writing a how-to that I will share with you so that you can make blinds too. There are lots of ways to make and finish Roman blinds but I cannot find a tutorial out there that combines the finish that I want so things are taking a little longer than planned because I'm writing the steps myself and finding out what works and doesn't work as I move through the process.

I'm hoping to finish this project for our home before the end of the year so I'll keep you updated.