Roman Shades for French Doors

This tutorial will help you make Roman Shades for French Doors. They are real Roman Shades, meaning they pull up with cording. They are not faux shades! They really do lower for privacy, as much or as little as you’d like. These window face south so it is necessary to lower the shades to protect the wood floors and furniture from sun bleach—especially this time of year (October) and all winter when the sun so far south in the sky.

If you want to make Roman Shades for your French doors there are a few little changes you’ll need to make to the regular Roman Shade tutorials I’ve written about before. 

Here is part 1 and here is part 2.

If you’ve never made Roman shades before for a regular window (like my side windows pictured above), I would suggest making one of those first. Then take that learning curve and apply it to making shades for your French doors. But hey, it’s your house, do what you want. It’s much easier to make roman shades for narrow windows if you are a beginner, like these chevron striped ones in my piano room. The windows are very narrow—great for a beginner.

The modifications you’ll need to make are………

First, you can’t use the regular 1”x2” wood header for a regular Roman shade, seen below.

Obviously there is no window header for French doors to screw it into! Also, French doors are usually metal so you don’t want to screw into them anyway. But here’s what I figured out many years ago.

Since metal doors are usually magnetic you will use magnetic curtain rods to take the place of the wooden header. You can usually get them at any hardware store. Get really good and strong magnetic curtains rods.  Mine are VERY difficult to pull off the door (I have to use two hands!) as the magnets are really, really strong, hence the scuff marks you see.

My French doors, although metal, do have the glass framed in a wood casing, so that’s where you’ll be drilling holes for the screw eyes.

The glass on both doors measure 19.5” inches x 62” inches. It looks best if the shades go an inch past the wood casing on both sides, so my shades are a finished width of 23” inches. You don’t have to be as precise on the length though. However, you do want to make the shades much longer than your glass measurement. Remember that the shades will hang several inches above your window pane, and you’ll want them to hang several inches past the bottom of the window pane as well.  The finished length of mine is 68”.

FABRIC CHOICE: I used 2 yards of 54” wide fabric cut directly in half right now the middle—no waste at all. I used “Premier Prints Embrace Slub Premier Navy” fabric.   As you can see, it’s not quite as dark navy as their picture implies, but I actually prefer it a bit lighter. (True navy almost seems black to me.) Super happy with it and the price can’t be beat.

DRAPERY LINING: I used a regular cheap and lightweight curtain lining. If you use heavy blackout lining the weight of the overall curtain will be too heavy and will look bulky when pulled up! A lightweight lining will ensure crisp folds for the pleats.

You’ll be sewing the shades exactly as in this first tutorial. That’s where I show you how to sew the rings on and everything.

This is how the back will look once you are done.

Sew your dowel pocket 5” above your bottom hem.

Then space your rings 8” apart. You’ll have a total of 8 rows of rings.

String up your shade with 9mm lift cord and use those little orbs (found here at draperysewingsupplies.com) or you could just tie knots. The orbs allow you adjust your shade quite easily after it is hung. (You just pull in or let out a little cording if your shades are pulling up crooked.)

I used blue painters tape to temporarily hold my cording in place at the top.

Insert your curtain rod and dowels, go to your window and thread the cording through your screw eyes just as you would on a regular roman shade mounted to wood.  It really helps to have a second pair of hands for this step—one person to hold the shade, the other person to do the threading.

Important note: Your curtain must be hung higher than your screw eyes so that the weight of the curtain (when being raised and lowered) rests on those rings, not the magnetic curtain rod! The magnetic curtain rod holds your shade in place when still,  but with too much weight on it it will be pulled off the door when raising the shade.  

Tie a knot with all three cords very close to the screw eyes and another knot a little way down. Use a cord condenser to finish off the ends after trimming to length.

When the shades are pulled up just wind the cording around the curtain rod to hold them into place. You can also swing the cording over the curtain rod to keep it away from shutting into the door when opened and closed. (Gee Cynthia, take a Mr. Clean Eraser to your door, look at all those scuff marks!)

Done and beautiful. This is my third set of shades (in 8 years) that I’ve sewn for these French doors. I made several sets in my old house as well. I never tire of them.

(And yes now I realize my rug matches too well so I swapped it with a gray rug from somewhere else right after this photo. Don’t like matchy matchy!)

Happy Sewing!

Sewing up a Storm: Roman Shades for a New Home

My sister-in-law and her husband bought a new home this summer. Winnie is a school teacher and has a small window of time each summer before she has to return to work. Seriously, I knew nothing about how hard teacher’s worked until Winnie lived with us.  For the first few months of each school year she works 15 hour days. She would leave our home by 5:30am and come home around 10pm. All to teach our kids to read. That’s what teachers do and I had no idea.

So for two days I helped her (and my mother-in-law who was in town from Chicago) sew, staple, cut wood, and drill into window casings for six windows. After a couple of days three window were done and hung with shades. Those two gals knew the routine and finished  hanging the last three over the next two more days. How good do her windows look now?

Aren’t these fabrics gorgeous? I suggested fabric.com to Winnie and boy did she find some gorgeous ones! She said she spent 8 hours trying to decide. I don’t blame her! There really is a great selection there right now in their home decor section. Can’t wait till fall when I have more time to sew and can dress up more of my own windows.

Want to make your own roman shades?

Tutorial for Roman Shades part 1

Tutorial for Roman Shades part 2

How to Make Roman Shades part 2

Part 1 can be read here.

This post will show you how to make a Roman Shade for an inside mount. Meaning, the shade will sit inside of your window frame. Most of the sewing details are the same and can be found in part 1, but some are different. Here goes!

My window is 41” side so I want my shade exactly 41” wide for the finished width. When I was a beginner I used to make the shade 1” narrower than my window so that it fit perfectly inside my window frame. However, the problem with that is that if your shade isn’t perfectly straight you will see it hang crooked once it is installed. We are amateurs after all, right? I have made that mistake many times, which isn’t a huge deal since your shades are mostly pulled up, but trust me, make them the exact width of your window to achieve near perfect results.

Use to tape measure to measure every inch of the way up and down your shade to acheive the exact width of your window. Normally, the sides seams are about 1 1/2 inches, but I had to adjust the pins as necessary to get the exact measurement of 41”. Then sew. Again, this is all explained in my first post.

The length of your finished shade will be the same as my previous post.

For this shade though I am not starting my rings at the very bottom of the shade. I am starting them a bit higher up so that the bottom section doesn’t get sun bleached by the sun when in the raised position. You will need to make a dowel pocket out of leftover lining. I used black out lining which is kind of ‘plastic-y’ and it doesn’t ravel, so I cut a strip 3” wide, folded it in half and sewed it 6 1/2” from the bottom.  Obviously, don’t sew the sides shut or you won’t be able to get the dowel in you moron.

Why 6 1/2” inches up from the bottom? Patience grasshopper.

Here’s the math. My rows of rings will once again be spaced 10”, which means I will have 5” pleats when pulled up. So if I want to see about an inch of the very bottom of the shade when it is pulled up I need to add about 1 1/2” to the to 5” to get the the point at which I want my rings to start. Consequently, you will need two dowels. (Hey, 7/16” inch dowels are only $1.24 at Lowes, so don’t be cheap.)

 

Attach your rings the same as part 1, either by hand or by using the button sew-on feature on your sewing machine.

Staple your shade to your 1x2 board. You’ll notice my board is just raw wood this time. On my outside mount shade I wrapped the 1x2 in fabric because it would show otherwise. Here it will not show so I don’t care. I have seen professionally installed roman shades and they usually paint the 1x2 to match the inside of the window, but I can’t be bothered. Hence, raw wood.

Attach your ring eyes and if you want the best roman shade ever use a cord lock!! Cord locks can be found at draperysewingsupplies.com.  What a cord lock does is allow your roman shade to be pulled up and down like mini blinds. Meaning, they will lock into place just by pulling them to right, and pulling to the left releases them. BRILLIANT!!! Totally worth the $9. As a side note, I have to just rave about Drapery Sewing Supplies.com because they sell really high quality products to make roman shades and they have videos to show you how to use the items. I never would’ve figured out the cord lock on my own, but thankfully the video explained it P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y. Their nylon cord is superior to the crap at Joann Fabrics. (See below photo to understand how crappy the nylon cord is I use from Joann.)

And if you use the cord lock you don’t need the wall cleat anymore. But you can still use a cleat just to keep the cords all nice and gathered. (The roman shade in the below photo is 5 years old, hence the dirty dingy falling-apart string.)

The only way I knew about the cord lock was that I went and toured this amazing gorgeous home for the Utah Valley Parade of Homes and noticed all the gorgeous roman shades at every window in this house. I lifted up the blinds and saw the cord lock, and of course snapped this  photo below because I was on a hunt to figure out where that little contraption came from. Bless you Google search. (Noticed the 1x2 is just painted? Awesome!)

And instead of tying knots at the bottom row of rings, I now use these little orbs instead. Makes pulling up your installed shade with perfectly even rows much easier because you don’t have to untie the knots to get them even anymore. About $1 each. Worth it. But definitely optional.

All ready to be installed! (I have the shade obviously in the pulled-up position.)

You’ll need another helper to install them. For this 41” wide window 3 screws, 2.5” long is all that was needed. Woops, you can see how the board split on the right side.

I think my guests will never wanna leave now that they have black-out lined roman shades to keep out the glaring light of the street lamp just outside this window. (Thanks Provo city. Actually, I do like that light, great for security.)

Before (These gorgeous curtains were too long (heaven forbid I hem them) and never made for this window—they used to hang in my office and are now for sale for $40. Contact me!)

After!

Breakdown of project cost:

fabric: Waverly Print from Joann $10, Blackout lining, $6, Rings $1.50, dowels and board $4, Orbs $4, 0.9 mm Nylon Cording $3, Screw Eyes $2, Cord lock $9, Cord condensor (for the end of the strings) $1. Most supplies purchased here.

TOTAL $40.50 AND 3 HOURS OF MY TIME.

Not bad compared to $350 for these shades at The Shade Store.

How to Make Roman Shades part 1

I’ve been making roman shades for at least 7 years now. I started making them for my own house and then started making them for clients. (Gave that up a while ago.) Truly, they are my favorite way to dress a window. I’m not a big fan of mini blinds, so to me, roman shades are the answer whenever possible. (I do have just one set of mini blinds in my home because the window is gigantic and it has a southern exposure that without diffused light would easily sun bleach all my furniture and carpet.)
Over the years, I’ve made plenty. Here’s a sample of different roman shades:
These were the first ones I ever made. This is my old house back in 2005. They are white canvas with a green border around the entire shade. Gotta love the tacky swing set pictured in our back yard. (I made those slipcovers as well on the chairs and ottomon…those items are now off to a better life with someone else.)

The side curtains in the picture below are inside mount on the side windows and the french doors (which are magnetic) also have roman shades…although you gotta get creative with those. See part 2 of this post for modifications for magnetic doors.) Sadly, I decided I didn’t love the traditional floral and those are now gone and replaced with simple white ones again. I guess I like what I like. And that traditional light fixture? Gone, thank goodness.

These are also inside mount ones I made for my sister law when she lived in Spokane. She lived there maybe 5 minutes so who knows if these are still alive and kicking.  (Name that song.) We put crystal trim along the bottom. Yummy.

More shades with pink crystal trim:

These (below) are pom-pom trimmed (hard to see in the light). I made these back in 2005, sadly my sweet little girl is growing up and is no longer this adorable 4 year old. (She’s an adorable 10 year old now.)

For the purposes of this tutorial, I am going to show you how to make an outside mount roman shade. Outside mount means that it is mounted on the outside of the window (as opposed to inside the frame of the window, which would be inside mount) The fabric is from Ikea and the lining is just come leftover white poly-cotton canvas. Ok, everything is from Ikea—the sofa is from their Karlstad line with a $20 blue slipcover (clearance) and the matching Karlstad ottoman also has a clearance $9 cover. Score. The side lamp is Ikea and the white x-back chair.

Here’s the hardware you will need: staple gun, 2 1/2” screws, nylon cording, screw eyes, plastic rings (I recommend using copper or metal rings if your window faces west as the sun will surely rot the plastic rings…ask me how I know), window cleat, and wall anchors (if you can’t drill into the studs). Not pictured: a wooden dowel is also needed.

Wall anchors are neeed as well. (I mounted my shade into my ceiling, so I had to use anchors.)

Cutting your fabric and lining: Measure the inside of your window and add 4 inches. This will give you a nice 2-inch over hang on the sides of the window. I forgot to do this for this project and only added 2” (dumb Cynthia), but they still worked. My window is 41” so the width I should’ve cut is 45”. As for the length, measure where the shade will be mounted  down to the window apron and add  2”.  I need 90” of length so I cut the fabric and lining 92”.

Sew around the two sides and bottom with a 1/2” to 1” seam allowance, turn right sides out, gently push out seams, and press. How happy do I look ironing? Good grief.

At this point the top is still open and raw, that’s fine for now. Next step is to fold the sides over to the back 1” and pin in place and sew, as seen below.

Now you are going to fold up the bottom for the dowel pocket about 1”, and iron in place. Do not sew yet!! It’s better to sew on the rings and then sew the hem in place after. This is where your dowel will be inserted so it has to remain ‘free’ of stitching on the inside.

Now you are ready to do the layout for the rings. I like large pleats so I space my rows 10” apart, lengthwise. As for how many rows you’ll need, that’s up to you. For narrow curtains like my french doors seen at the top of this post, I use 3 columns. For these shades I did 5 columns, evenly spaced across.
Using a water soluble marker, make a dot everywhere you’ll need to sew a ring. Your first row of rings will go on the bottom inch that you just ironed. You can see that I used a safety pin near each blue dot. This is essential! When you go to sew on your rings your lining and main fabric will shift. The safety pin ensures that your rings will be sewn at just the right spot. You’ll see that my rings don’t go all the way to the top (raw edge) of my curtain. (In picture below the shade is upside down.) I like to leave 12-18” free at the top without rings. That’s about as high as I’d ever pull up these shades for such a loooong window. But if you want to pull up your shades higher, extend the rings almost to the top, within 6 inches maybe.

Now you are ready to either sew on your rings by hand or machine. I choose to do this by machine. Lower your feed dogs and choose a narrow satin stitch with a length of nearly zero. If you have an open embroidery foot, use that. I am using a button sew on foot, but that’s optional. (On my Bernina 830 there is a button sew on program so I didn’t have to lower the feed dogs or choose a satin stitch. The machine automatically does that when I choose to sew on the buttons. Loooove that!)
Beginning at the bottom, unfold the hem you ironed in space, and sew on your rings. The bottom row is the only row that will have the rings sewn to the right side of the fabric.

Thre rest of the rings will be sewn on the wrong side, lining side up. Go slowly….sewing on all these blasted rings takes a while, probably an hour. A real snoozer, but it’s better than doing it by hand. Remove the safety pins as you go along.

Bring threads to the back and knot if desired. Sometimes I even put a dot of Fray Check on the inside threads of each ring, just to make sure nothing unravels.
Fold back up the 1” hem on the bottom and sew in place with a straight stitch, see below. If you have a walking foot (or dual feed like on the Bernina 830), use that. Huh? What’s a walking foot you ask? Nevermind, you’ll be fine with out it.

Now you can sew shut the top either with a serger or a regular sewing machine. Nobody will see this part so it doesn’t need to be pretty. Alright, you are done with the sewing part. So turn off your machine!
Cut a 1”x2” pine board to 1” shorter than your shade. My shade is now 42” so I cut my pine board 41”. (The hardware store can do this for you if needed.) Staple leftover fabric around you board. This step is optional for inside mount but essential for outside mount because you will see the edges of the board! Attach screw eyes to bottom of board by first drilling pilot holes then screw in the little screw eyes. You might have to snip the fabric to drill the holes.

Staple the top of your shade to the top of your board, wrapping it around about 1” to the top of the board. (You might want to remove the screw eyes if this is difficult for you.) Notice how lazy I was and used the burgandy thread that was already in my serger to finish off the top? But guess what…nobody will see!

Decide if you want your shade strings to pull up on the right side or the left side of the window. I wanted the right side, so I inserted all my strings to the left. Make sense? Tie your first nylon cord to the bottom most ring (see black arrow below), string up to the top through each ring, then through the screw eyes going to the left. Sorry, the cording is white, the lining is white, lousy photo so I drew in the black lines to represent the cording.

Now your shade is all ‘strung’ up and probably seems like a mess. We’ll fix that later.
Here is a close up of how it will look. All of the cording will be strung through the upper left screw eye as the final step in ‘threading’ the shade..

Ok, now we are on the home stretch. Insert your dowel in the bottom, no picture of that, sorry.
I am mounting my shade in the ceiling. Why? Because this window is northern facing and I want as much sun in here as possible. So…when my shade is pulled up I want it to barely cover my window. If this was a really sunny room I would mountain inside because diffusing light might be a good thing. Does that make sense? Mounting shades all the way to the ceiling also gives the illusion of taller windows. :)
Here I am installing the anchors. If you are drilling into the wall, just use a stud finder, drill your board into the studs with 2-3 screws, and skip this step. (Argh…I still gotta putty those holes leftover from my old drapes.)

Using a cordless drill, attach your board to the wall/ceiling/window frame! You’ll need a second pair of hands to hold the shade away from you.
Pull up your cording to make sure everything works. I like to make a series of knots, tieing all 5 cords together once they exit the last screw eye. This keeps then from tangling and it’s safer if you have small children in the house.  (In this photo below I am beginning to wonder why I chose to mount all the way to my 9-ft ceilings. I feel like I’m gonna fall off the ladder this high up!)
 
Attach your wall cleat.

Enjoy your roman shade for years to come!

I hope you found this helpful. Stay tuned for part 2 which will have variations for inside mount as well as french door roman shades.
I also like my new pillows….so fresh and spring-like. Dang that stupid snow still on the front lawn. Curse evil snow!

Stay tuned for part 2 where I will talk about the other variations for french doors and inside mount.