Faux Roman Shade - ELIZABETH JOAN DESIGNS

If you’ve been following along, then you probably know that we’ve been working on our kitchen and I wanted to share a little update that has made a big impact on the space.

I love the look of Roman shades (especially this striped one from Dear Lillie) and knew that I wanted something similar in our kitchen instead of the horribly over sized mini-blinds that were there when we bought our home. Seriously, who hangs blinds above the window on the wall?

However, I didn’t have the patience to wait for similar fabric to be shipped to me, so I decided to use an old white curtain we had in storage and paint it with stripes. I started by removing the blinds and measuring the window dimensions. Then, I marked where the edges would be on the curtain and cut along the left side and top. leaving some seam allowance and room for a pocket along the top. (I used the existing finished edges on the bottom and right side.)

Next, I sewed the unfinished sides, leaving a pocket along the top for a tension rod to go through.

To paint the stripes, I kind of followed this tutorial from Perfectly Imperfect. The color is Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter, which is the same as our wall color in the kitchen.

Once everything was dry and the tape removed, I hung the curtain up on the tension rod. Unfortunately, there were some places where the light was still visible through the paint and it looked pretty funky. See?

So, I used a paint brush to touch up those spots and everything in the world was good again.

Finally, it was time to make this simple, straight curtain into a Roman shade. I placed two more cheap tension rods in front of my fabric roughly 6 inches from the top rod and from each other.

Then, I pulled a section forward from behind the middle rod and draped it over the front. I did the same for the bottom tension rod too, which gives the look of a roman shade, minus the functionality. (If you are looking for a DIY Roman shade that works, check out Emily’s post, A Shady Project.)