A Roman Blind

I've been chipping away at home furnishing for our new pad - curtains being top of the list. The ones I've made for the living room and our bedroom are not particularly exciting - yet functional and a good stop gap until these rooms are properly thought about and decorated.

But in Finn's room I had a clear idea of the overall look I was after and wanted to use a lovely old map fabric I had stumbled across.

I decided that a roman blind would be perfect and after browsing the tutorials online felt that the one on the Channel 4 website offered the most clear instructions.

Finally after weeks of doing a little bit here and there its up and finished.

I had to sew two pieces together to get the width and it took a little redoing to match the pattern but having the longitude and latitude lines in the design was a big help! I covered the baton with matching fabric so that there was less chance of any gaps showing. 

I think next time I'll think about positioning it on the wall rather than set into the window so it doesn't catch on the window handles. I'll also think more about the size of gaps between each rod so that a better layer effect is created when the blind is pulled up.

My final tip is to avoid stick on velcro - all the tutorials advise you to use it but DON'T! I ended up stapling my bit to the wooden baton that was screwed into the window and then hand sewing the strip to the curtain. It would have saved a lot of time and bother to simply sew it from the start.