Sunday, June 7, 2009

Making Master Bedroom Shades

I'm all excited to have a new project to work on. Our Master Bedroom doesn't have any window coverings. (Well, we could have hung the old roller shades back up, but they were pretty brittle and didn't seem like they would last long.) Anyway, it gets pretty bright in there and Jeff's current solution, while amusing, isn't working very well.

From the beginning, Jeff has asked that I make Roman shades. While I was cruising around on the web yesterday looking for the parts to order, I found a great website, Terrell Designs, that showed how people made pieced Roman Shades and then I knew how I wanted to do this project!
So, I got to paw through my quilt books today and pick a pattern. This one looked really suitable for this project. It's called "Comet" and I pulled it from the 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts book, by Judy Hopkins and Nancy J. Martin. (This is my all-time favorite quilt book.)

I'm trying to build this without buying any new fabric for the pieced front. Though, I did have to buy the blackout fabric, but I only had to buy 3 yards.

I am, of course, not going to use anything like their colors. I am going to use green, beige and peach colors. I must use this fabric as the wide strip because it matches the bedroom paint so well.

These are the colors I'm going to use for the central comet:

I had a green that matched the carpet better, but I didn't have enough of it for the borders as well. So, this green is my second choice but I should have enough to finish the project.


And these are the fabrics I think I'll use for the light portion. I had to squeeze some purple in there.

I went and ordered all the rest of the parts I need this morning. I found a really affordable site, though the quantities were much larger than I would normally buy. But now I'm thinking I'll be making Roman Shades for the other two bedrooms. It's really sad when buying a large quantity online is about as expensive as buying only what you need at your local hardware store. Oh well.

Jeff spent several hours last night and today reconstructing my sewing tables correctly. Thanks Jeff!










Jeff finished setting up the tables this morning and now I can finally start unpacking.





























Update at 6:30PM:

Well, I spent all day unpacking and moving into the furniture. And with Jeff's help, we got the thread rack and quilt hung on the wall. The serger thread racks didn't get hung yet; I simply cannot drill a dozen screws into the nice wood panelling so I'm going to go buy a piece of thin plywood and install them onto there.

Anyway, with a bit of clean-up the room is basically ready to use. There's still a pile of boxes in the corner for the closet and a pile in the hallway, but I can work around them temporarily while I try and get these window shades finished. (I cannot move into the closet without cleaning it out first; it's still full of my grandmother's stuff.)

I've unpacked most of the easy boxes and I did not find the long quilting rulers. Dang, they're probably in one of the long bolt boxes, but they're not called out on the labelling. And I simply cannot talk myself into opening all of them to see if they're in there. If I cannot find them fairly soon, I think I'll just go buy another 24-inch ruler and then I'll have a spare.













Another Update, this one at 11:20PM:

I just finished making one square to try out the fabrics. It would probably look more striking in solid colors (as the pattern calls for), but I'm trying to bring in more colors. I think this will work OK. Though this square ended up a little skewed as I just sort of sewed it together without pinning any of the corners and some of the diagonal cuts were slightly off.

1 comment:

  1. I love the idea of the quilted Roman shades. I saw that in a magazine once, but they way they do it makes light shine through them to look like stained glass. Unfortunately, I'll bet it bleaches out the color pretty quickly. The blackout fabric is a good idea! I also love your color-coordinated stash in the book case...so tidy! I'd also recommend the OmniGrip, the greenish colored rulers, which will stick to your fabrics a bit to prevent slippage when you cut. Talk to you soon!

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