Roman Shade Re-Do!

Let's just start with....I wish I had a before picture!

The walls were a straw color and so was the existing roman shade over our kitchen sink.

We recently painted our whole main house (interior walls) white. I love the crispness but the straw colored drapery looked blah. I knew I wanted to add in some color.

I removed the roman shade and studied it a bit.

I purchased a fabric shower curtain from Cost Plus World Market to use for my new fabric.

I layed the shower curtain out and placed the roman shade on top of it.

I then used a seam ripper to remove the end stitches of the rod pockets including ripping the seam back 1 1/2 inches to be able to sew the new fabric hem to cover the existing straw colored fabric.

{Sorry for the bad lighting....I did this project late one evening!}

Next I cut my new fabric to fit the existing roman shade taking into account appropriate seam allowances all the way around. This is totally a cheater way to make a roman shade!

I rolled the hem and sewed all the way around....covering any existing old straw colored fabric.

Once that was completed....I stitched through all fabric at each rod pocket just as it had been on the original roman shade. Then I slid the rods back in and instead of hand sewing the ends....I cheated again and just used scotch tape to seal the ends in a rolling fashion. Shhh...don't tell anyone.

I only have patience for about a 3 hour project MAX!

I next restrung the nylon strings through all the existing rings and braided off the ends exactly how it had been before....except I couldn't figure out how to get it back in through the roller up thingy....so now my roman shade is in a 'fixed' position for now. No pulling up or down. Oh well! We hardly ever used that feature anyway!! Lastly, I stapled off the new shade to the existing wood bracket and rehung the new shade.

I love the finished shade. Really LOVE the colors against the white walls and cabinets.