Since me and my little family had recently moved into our new little farm house I've noticed that we have ZERO curtains for our windows. I'm a big fan of anything with wood tones that's very simple like roman shades. I have recently made some roman shades for the living room/dining room area down stairs and they turned out beautifully. However, in our master closet upstairs we have 2 windows which have become a problem for my husband because he is concerned that the sun will bleach our clothes over time if we didn't put up some window treatments. So I didn't want to spend a lot of money on fixing them up because...well...the two windows are in a closet for goodness sake.
While at my local supercenter, I stubbled upon some bamboo beach mats and thought "This is it! I'm going to make my shades out of these!" So I bought 2 beach mats, 2 tension rods, and got home as quick (and safely :D ) as I could. While in the process of making the shades I thought that this would be a great opportunity to make a LONG OVERDUE tutorial. So here we go!
Materials you will need:
- 1 bamboo mat (1 per each window, make sure that it is wide enough to cover the window)
- 1 tension rod or curtain rod (I used the tension rod because we have concrete walls)
- Scissors
- Paper clips or sewing machine/needle & thread
Here's how to make it:
1. Start off by hanging your tension rod or curtain rod. Make sure when you place it at the top of your window that you have enough space to slide the bamboo mat through the top.
I used my finger as a guide of how far away I place the tension rod from the top of the window so that both of my tension rods were equally placed.
2. Next you're going to want to hold up your mat next to your window so you know how much of the excess you need to trim off.
**Note** If you don't want the colored binding to be left on the shad make sure you trim it off first before determining how much extra you need to trim off.
3. Mark or hold the mat where the extra needs to be trimmed off.
4. Start trim the mat where you had marked using the threads in the mat as a guide. Mine just happened to be right on one of the threads so I just followed it all the way down.
5. Once you have trimmed your mat, slide the mat through the space between the top of your window and the tension/curtain rod.
6. Pull the mat down to the desired length you want. I left mine about 5 inches from the top but because the mat is super long you can also just pull it all the way down so that the middle of the mat is hanging from the top of the rod.
7. Now you can either clip the overlap together with the main part of the mat or you can sew it together. Because I am lazy and just needed a quick fix for the time being I just used these ultra chic cow paper clips to hold the shade in place.
8. Now you can either roll up the bottom or trim it to your liking.
And that's it! See super simple! This project would be great for dorm rooms or apartments because they are cost efficient, time saving, and easy to take down. I've also thought about hanging some ties (possibly made from fabric) from the top to hold up the shade when I would like to let a little light through.
