After months of drooling over the instructions at Little Green Notebook, I made my own shades! I modified the instructions a little because I was worried about keeping the slats straight. I also took a chance on hot glue, since I didn’t have fabric glue on hand. It worked pretty good, but it is easy to pull everything apart when you want to. So far it is staying put for normal use.
First I had DH hang the blinds, and then I took scissors and snipped groups of 6 slats. By leaving the ladder threads intact everything stayed nice and straight. This left my spaces 6.25 inches apart which is pretty close to standard for Roman Shades.
I did do a little sewing. After measuring the length and width of the blind, I cut my fabric that size plus 1 inch all the way around. Then I serged and hemmed all the raw edges. To make the ruffle trim, I cut strips 3.5 inches wide, sewed them together in a very long strip and hemmed it with a rolled edge. Then I ran it through my ruffler with a 1/2 inch seam allowance down both edges.
It helped to steam iron everything flat before top-stitching it place on the shade. The final effect was a puffing strip with a ruffle on each edge. I love it!
Once the shade was stitched together, I hot glued it to each slat and across the top (leaving the top edges free so I can take it down.) I glued it while it was hanging and gravity made everything hang straight. I love how it looks except that I can see the slats though the shade. I didn’t want to use black out fabric because I like plenty of light in the room, but I wonder if I should have done it anyway.
