Avoiding night-time peepery with a roman blind tutorial…

This window needed something to avoid peepery paranoia. I decided to make a blind because I only had one curtain (the other is covering the French doors) and it happened to be only just slightly bigger than the width of the window – certainly not enough to split into two curtains.

You will need:
Upholstery-type fabric
Lining fabric
Dowel
Screw in eyelets
Strong cord

I don’t have any pictures of the first bit, because it’s yukky measuring :(
The main fabric is going to be flat, but I am using a lining to form the channels for the rods.
First you need to measure your window. You need to cut your main fabric the size of the window plus 10cm all round.
You now need to decide how many rods you are going to use – remember there is one at the very top, but not one at the very bottom. I decided I needed six rods. The dowel I chose was 1cm wide, and when I wrapped the fabric loosely around the dowel then measured it, I needed 5cm of fabric to form a channel for the dowel.
5x6cm = 30cm
My window is 105cm high so…
105cm+30cm = 135cm + hem allowance.
This is the length of my lining fabric. The width needs to be slightly less than the main fabric if you want to hide your cord, so I cut mine 15cm smaller than the main fabric.
Once you’ve cut your two pieces of fabric you need to hem all around the main piece and on three sides of the lining leaving the bottom raw edged. The main piece should have a 5cm hem on each side, you’ll see why later.

Then you need to do the dreaded measuring – for some reason I always do this wrong first time. Now some maths – remember I wanted six rods? Well I also wanted the bottom to have a small overhang of 10cm when the blind was raised. So…
135cm – 10cm = 125cm
125cm – 30cm (excess for the channels) = 95cm
Because one of the rods is at the top, and I have decided on the length of the bottom segment myself, I only need to divide this number by 5.
95cm/5 = 19cm
This will be the distance between the rods.
Phew! I hate maths, even easy maths confusles me.
So, starting from the bottom hem I marked 10cm, then 5cm, then 19cm, then 5, then 19… ending with 5cm at the top. Do the same on both sides.
Now fold the fabric along the middle of each channel so the marks line up and pin like mad.

When you’re happy with your channels, press all the folds.

If you haven’t already, mark the fabric 2.5cm from each fold…

…and sew…

…until your lining looks like this: Giant pintucks!

Press all the channels downwards and lay your lining on your main fabric, making sure the tops are level. See how the lining is smaller on each side? This will hide the cord. The 5cm hem on the main fabric means that you won’t see the back of the fabric.

Once again pin like mad, especially along the channels.

Now sew through all the layers, following the channel stitching. Go slowly, you don’t want either of the layers to pucker!

   

Now is the laborious bit – you need to hand sew the bottom hem and tack around all the sides, including the top. You can do this with your machine, but it’s a lot of stopping and starting (you don’t want to sew those channels shut!) and I wanted to keep the visible stitches to a minimum on the front.
Now measure the width of you lining again (just to be on the safe side), and cut five lengths of dowel. The sixth (top) dowel should be the width of the whole blind for hanging.

Round the ends of your dowel, this will make it easier to thread them through your sewn channels.

Screw your eyelets into the ends of all the dowels except the top one…

…and thread them through your channels.

Now thread one length of cord through the loops on the right, and another through the loops on the left.
Your cords should be different lengths – one should be twice the height of the blind plus the width of the blind (plus 30cm for luck!) mine was 105cmx2+115cm (+30) = 355cm. The other should be twice the height (+30) = 240cm. Tie the lengths of cord to the eyelets on each bottom dowel.
I screwed two cup hooks (I love cup hooks) into the wood above the window - 1cm in, and 1cm down from the top. Then I hooked the top dowel over the cup hooks. The longer length of cord should be looped through both cup hooks over the top of the blind.

Letting the blind hang loose, tie both cords together at the top and tie something interesting to the bottom.

Screw a cleat to the wall near the window so you have something to tie the cords to (or wrap them around) to keep the blind up, and you’re done!

 

Lawks, that was a lot of steps! But at least now I’m safe from the night-time peepery!
Beccy