Going on several months now, spanning holidays and waning interest and more pressing projects and chronic iPad usage, I've been intermittently toiling away at the roman shade for the french door in our bedroom. It's actually a project seven years overdue. With absolutely no sewing skills, and no time spent behind a machine since the previous decade when I'd labored over a string of cloth lunch bags for my high school environmental club, I purchased a shiny new Singer from Target along with many yards of fabric, some satin-y, some sheer, and picked up a somewhat-dated book on window treatments from the library book-sale. I was going to make a couple of roman shades for our bedroom windows in an ambitious design, complicated by borders and strategically-placed sheer panels. Having never worked with that sort of slick fabric before, and having never applied a border, mitered or otherwise, to any length of fabric, the project ended in utter failure. The satin sloshed around on itself and I couldn't figure out how to get the border on even and straight. In the end, what went up on the windows were Ikea-bought curtain panels, hemmed to just above the floor-line, a project even my meager skills could handle.
So when, in a new house, I decided to tackle the roman shade again, even with considerably more sewing time under my pedal foot, I took a conservative tack, taking the form of a crisp decor-weight cotton and equally uncomplicated lining fabric. Roman shades seem ridden with such daunting complexities, with all the cording and dowel rod-encasing and lath-attaching, and listing requirements for things like cleats and drop-weights. None of that was really so complicated, a fact that should have been evidenced by the fact that the whole curtain-making procedure took up all of three pages in my photo-heavy book, the same one I'd picked up for the never-realized shades.
The part I wasn't prepared for, what really held up the process (besides my unshakable tendency to dilly-dally at that initial cutting stage), was the handwork called for to line the panel. Many nap-times, days off from work, late-nights with coffee, were spent hunched over the curtain, working the perimeter with needle and thread. More hand-stitching to secure the dowels in their cozy pockets. And then couching, to the back of the panel, the little plastic rings found in a bag in the darkest corner of the craft closet. Other contents of that bag included curtain cording and the sheer fabric purchased to construct that other shade. The cording went smoothly while kids were off at school. I'll know, next time, not even to attempt that step with a nosy, greasy-fingered toddler around to trip through and yank at strings and tighten unwanted knots and sprawl across the expanse of fabric.
Mr. New Media, being tall enough to do so without the assistance of wobbly chairs, completed the actual installation of the shade. And, as I've mentioned before, we're still searching for something to tie the cord around that isn't the usual, uninspired cleat. But it's up, elegantly tucking up into itself just as a proper roman shade should. Of course, part of my conservatism on this project involved purchasing just enough yardage to cover the door, and not enough to also complete a matching shade for the window on the other side of the room. And, of course, it being months later, and apparently well into a new fabric design season, the bolt containing that fabric is no longer at the store. I did source it on Etsy, my Paypal balance finally finding purpose, so a few more yards are on their merry way.
And when they finally get here, they'll sit around until get another six months to spare on another set of roman shades.
