I was browsing pinterest and found this DIY Roman Shade project which is made from cheap blinds so I decided to try it myself. The actual project did not take much time, but I find cutting and hemming fabric evenly to be extremely difficult. I included a few tips that helped me with this issue.
I found a detailed tutorial from the little house big plans blog but I will also include my directions. I started by cutting the ladder cord off the blind. This particular blind had three ladder cords and then two pull cords. Make sure that you don't cut the pull cord (there should be two pull cords). After cutting the ladder cords, remove them completely from the blind. Then you can take the caps off the bottom of the blind and untie the knot. Once this is done you can slide the bottom panel off, along with unwanted slats.
I began by cutting the fabric to the size of the blind and add a 1" for the hem to all sides. I used a few of the slates to help make sure that I measured and cut correctly. Once I cut the fabric, I taped the portion of the fabric that would be the front of the blind. This made it easy to fold the outer edges to iron and glue the hem. I simply added the fabric glue and ironed over it again to make sure that it held.
The next step is to measure out the slats for the blind that will later be attached to the fabric. I measure my slates 20" (including the top panel), then 9 ", 12", then the bottom panel which I measured by folding the fabric beside the blinds. I used a black sharpie to mark the bottom of the string and then glued the fabric to the slats. Make sure that you do not use glue near the pull cord or it will not work properly. I double checked each slat before gluing to make sure that they were even on both sides. Attach the bottom panel by tying the knot and putting the caps back on. Then I glued the fabric to the side of the bottom panel. Below is a picture of the back of the blind which shows the spacing of the slats. Please feel free to comment or ask questions about this project!
