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!

Triangle Quilt

These triangle quilts are everywhere these days. Just look up “triangle quilt” on Pinterest and holy smokes, you’ll see loads of luscious ones. Not wanting to be left out I wanted one of my own. Yea, well, it took me a whole year to make this. In actuality it took me a few days back in September 2013, then I shoved it in a corner, and finished it this September of 2014. I am the queen of no unfinished projects but quilting is the exception. I get all fired up for a project…..and then I lose steam. And that’s why I don’t quilt much. I absolutely love quilts but don’t have the patience to make more than one a year. I prefer sewing projects that can be done in under 5 hours. I sadly accept that fact about myself. But I want to change, really, I do.

I started out buying this ruler, which now I wonder will I ever use again?

It did make cutting all those triangle go super duper fast, so it was worth the $25 to my pocket book. But still. Now I gotta get my money’s worth.

It’s mainly Kona cotton solids with a handful of prints thrown in.Here are the triangles sewn into strips, all spread out to try out different layouts.

Here I am, at night, pinning all those strips together. Thankfully most of the edges are on a bias so it was easy to stretch and match up *most* of the triangle points. I have to admit—I hated this part. Hate.

But she’s done and she’s lovely and has a semi-permanent home on my wingback chair. It’s what you see when you first walk in my home.  I like it there.

Isn’t the back kinda cool? Yup, notice my binding why don’t you. I do not sew binding on by hand because life is too short.

I do, however, sew it to the back first, then flip it to the front and stitch it down. I don’t care that it isn’t perfect. Nothing in life should be perfect except lemon meringue pie and piano solos. I can do both actually, but not perfectly. Hypocrite.

I’ve gotten in the habit of embroidering the date on my quilts instead of doing quilt tags. I used my Marker Fine Point font in the 1 inch size, found here.

I love how my wonky triangle quilting turned out. Again, not perfect, but perfectly how I wanted it. I should have sent this puppy out to be quilted—that’s what took me a whole year. I got sick of stitching inside those 180 triangles.

Finally, I’m the proud owner of my very own triangle quilt. Hooray!

Office Makeover

After a long three months the office is finally done. I’m not even sure I can call it an office anymore, more like an office/sitting room?

Here’s how the office looked before. Yellow walls (not quite as yellow as these photos), turquoise desk, Ikea couch, shag carpet. That’s pretty much it.

The room, as an office, was just fine (well, not terribly stylish) but I really wanted to create more space in these tiny little rooms in the front of my house.

I wanted to move the desk from the main wall to the opposite wall. That way it wouldn’t be the first thing you saw when you walked into my house. The hideous entry way travertine tile was replaced as well as the shag carpet.

GOALS:

1) Create a “formal” front room—a place I could visit with guests away from the family room—meaning away from the noisy TV.

2) The room needed to flow into the super tiny piano room adjacent to the foyer. I felt like whenever we played the piano for guests they had to stand right next to you—like a lounge singer. Or sit awkwardly right behind you. That room is the size of a postage stamp. What were the previous owners (who built this house) thinking.

3) The room still needed to have a computer in an open space. I don’t believe in letting children have a computer or internet access in their rooms (too much bad stuff out there) so we still needed a family computer in an open space where I can check up on the kids.

4) A place where Paul and I could get away from the noisy children and be alone to read a good book or visit about our day without eavesdroppers. The doors close in the office so privacy can be created easily.

Those are a lot of goals for a tiny 11 feet x 11 feet room!

DURING THE PROJECT:

Here are some pictures during the remodel—shaggy carpet is still in, walls have been painted white, baseboards are being painted.

Don’t I look cool holding an orbit sander with dust all over my butt. Classy.

My girls have been begging to learn to paint so I figured this was the right project because the carpet was being ripped out. No drop cloths necessary and I didn’t fret over drips. Yes.

Shaggy carpet gone, super dark wood floors are in! It is a small room, only about 11 feet x 11 feet. During the remodel we switched to Google Fiber so I had them put the internet switches (I have no idea what you call those kind of outlets) in the opposite corner of where the desk used to be. That’s why the photo below looks ridiculous with internet wires everywhere.

The wood floors were a real bargain from RC Willey. A really dark stained Hickory. They were $2.99/ft. and with labor I think both rooms (office and adjacent piano room) came to around $1200. What a deal.

Since we went with white walls I wanted to frame the window with some casing otherwise it would be too plain. My father was in town from  California a couple months ago so I enlisted his help. And by help I mean I bought the wood and he did all of the work. He is an amazing carpenter.

Every girl should have a handy dad. (My girls don’t, but I do. Paul has other talents—he’ll be able to do his kids’ taxes.)

FURNITURE:

Big purchases first. I knew I had a good budget for the sofa and the wingback chair. Once I priced the chair and sofa I realized I would have to bargain shop for everything else. I headed to Alice Lane where everything is luxurious, classy and timeless. If money grew on trees I would have them decorate the entire room floor to ceiling. Ok, they’d decorate my entire house.  A stylist at Alice Lane helped me pick the London Sofa in a gray/taupe velvet. I was giddy when she suggested that sofa because I have had my eye on it ever since I saw it in last year’s Parade of Homes. (Click here to see it in turquoise velvet in that beautiful Parade home.) A note about picking fabrics—this velvet was the cheapest grade of fabric I could get. My first choice was a true gray velvet but that doubled the price of the sofa. So this was a very happy second choice.

Here I am the day the couch arrived a few weeks ago. Slooowly getting there!

I love a classic wingback chair but it has to be modernized with simple lines. I went with Kalinda’s Chair in a warm cognac leather. Actually, my husband Paul picked that leather. It’s very manly but I love the crackly-worn finish of it. Timeless.

 

The cute chrome & glass side table came from Four Chairs furniture. The ottoman is the Klippan footstool from Ikea.  I’ve had it for years but now they’re discontinued. I recovered it once again in this Ikat fabric.

The 5’x8’  navy/white herringbone rug was only $75 at Rugs USA. Love that website.

Finally the desk. I would have loved to have the budget for a fancy desk. Something sleek and modern. But splurging on the couch and leather chair meant going cheap on the desk. For now, this Ikea ensemble works just fine. I first saw it in this office makeover and knew I could make it work too. If it wasn’t for the ugly black printer I think I would like this space better. (Ironically a wireless printer has to be wired to at least one computer. Or at least this one does.)

The Ikea table top is Linnmon, which sits on the Alex cabinet and two silver legs. The file cabinet is Micke which had to be on wheels so we could still close the French doors. The space is a tight space for the desk (and everything that is needed to house a computer) but I am very happy with how this corner looks now, especially considering it was about $120 for everything. Thanks Ikea.

The Janette gray chair is from Overstock. The retro telephone is from Amazon.

The blue bookshelf was dragged from somewhere else in the house. My dad and I sprayed it blue a couple years ago. It was providence to have something fit that space that I didn’t have to pay for. Well, I paid for it years ago, but you know what I mean.

SEWING:

I made a new roman shade for the window.  Don’t forget, I have tutorials on this blog to teach you how to make your own roman shade. See the the sidebar. This is the fabric I used.

The sewing continued by making all the pillows. Below is my favorite pillow for the room. I took blue linen and white linen strips and sewed them together and then made blue/gray piping. Yum.

All the pillows coordinate but don’t match too much. I hate it when everything is matchy-matchy.  The coral print is Amy Butler. All the fabrics came from fabric.com.

Finishing off the pillows are a blue velvet pillow with shell buttons, a plaid men’s suiting pillow, an embroidered pillow with my Triangles Scattered design on linen, and a white linen pillow with my pineapple design also in white.

ARTWORK:

With white walls (Benjamin Moore White Dove—same as my kitchen cabinets) I knew we had to have lots of colorful artwork.

I’ve been noticing the style right now is a floating frame around a canvas.

I went classic with some Van Gogh prints from Great Big Canvas for the main wall. Make sure you wait until they have a 40-50% coupon. Each canvas framed was $120.

The watercolor is from So Very Happy Art on Etsy. I had it custom framed at Provo Art & Frame with a double mat in navy and white and a bronze-y frame. I always love how they frame my prints.

The watercolor is the perfect modern touch over the very traditional wing chair.

The lamp was purchased at TJ Maxx and was originally white. But I sprayed it orange.

The prints above the desk are from Yao Cheng which I put into cheap frames I’ve had for years. I bought them at Michael’s and love how thick the mats are. The prints are only 8”x10” but with such large frames/mats they look bigger. And custom. You can see in my “before” photos at the beginning of this post that I’ve used these frames for years.

The bookcase needed some art as well but with so much art around the room already I needed something neutral—like a mirror. I found this mirror at Target.

The TJ Maxx silver lamp (dragged from elsewhere in the house) is too short so it is standing on books to give it height. I’m still looking for a better lamp. Most of the accessories are either from TJ Maxx or West Elm. The vintage Brownie camera was found in Nashville last summer at an antique mall. A great score for this amateur hobby photographer.

Finally it’s all done and my family of five can enjoy it for years to come.