DIY Roman Shade & Valance

**Believe it or not, I’m actually just about done showing you projects for the nursery! I’ll have the final reveal soon.**

For such a simple project, getting this one to picture-ready sure seemed to take a long time! One of my biggest frustrations with how I put together Jace’s nursery was the window coverings. I love the way it looks, but just don’t like the way it functions. We bought faux wood blinds and then I did decorative but not functional curtains. For as pretty as the blinds are, they do a very poor job of blocking out the light, so my son’s westward facing room gets bright nice and early, waking my boy up earlier than this momma likes. So we now have a fleece blanket hung over his window to keep things dark. When figuring out what I wanted for Reese’s nursery, black out material was a must.

I had seen and pinned Heather from Objective: Home’s tutorial for turning your basic mini blinds into a roman shade quite a while ago.

My window started very plane—cheapie aluminum mini blinds with nothing else decorative around them.

I used home décor fabric from Joann’s (the same as for recovering my glider) and backed it with blackout material (also from Joann’s). The blackout material is very effective in keeping out the light, so I love it! The only issue I had with mine is that I think the combination of heavy fabric and heavy blackout material and a wider blind (I had to cut the center ladder string that provided support to the aluminum blinds) meant that mine doesn’t pull up and lay as nicely as Heather’s. In fact, originally there was really bad sagging in the middle. I fixed that by sliding dowels in along with the blinds the fabric was glued to. But with some fiddling, I can get it to lay nicely enough.

The shade is edged in green fabric, and then I love the way my valance turned out. This way, all the colors from the room are brought in. The valance is also from home décor fabric, and then I added a strip at the hem of a light blue cotton. Then sewed down a red tassel and topped it with turquoise ribbon. I’m very happy with the final look, but even happier that the light will be kept out!

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