My Roman Shade Cheat

I have been wanting to replace the bamboo roman shade that covers my front door for some time, but of course didn't want to spend a fortune doing so.  Recently I had picked up some upholstery fabric on sale and had intended to make my own.

I started with this huge piece of fabric:


I pulled down my old shade to inspect how exactly it worked and see if I could salvage the hardware for my new shade when the light bulb went off....why not just cover the old one?  (I wish I had taken a picture of the shade before, but you can get an idea of it from the picture below)

I hemmed the fabric leaving excess to wrap around the back of the blind (I needed it to look neat because you would see it from the outside).  

I installed some grommets at the top to allow the cording to go through the cover and used a very strong spray adhesive to glue the cover onto front of the old shade.  I did this from top to bottom, a little bit at a time, while the shade was hanging, carefully evening out any bubbles.

I finished the edges by top stitching the fabric to the bamboo using a heavy gauge needle (surprisingly I didn't break a needle doing this) I probably didn't need to do this part, but I wanted to secure the fabric in place and I like the look of a sewn seam.

I finished the shade off by covering the top piece that hangs down and hides the hardware....once again, using spray adhesive.

And a few hours later.....walla!  A brand new shade!  The best part is I didn't have to do a ton of measuring, install dowels, hardware, etc.

How cool is that?  I may have "cheated", but it saved me a whole lot of time and I am extremely happy with the results.