Let’s Make a Faux Roman Shade – Tutorial

After reupholstering a loveseat, a client had a great idea on what to do with the leftover fabric. To tie the seating in with the rest of the space, she asked me to make a faux Roman shade.

The client provided a reference photo below, and said that she wanted hers to be 38″ wide and hanging down about 16 inches.

Here is my step-by-step process in creating this Faux Roman Shade

Step 1 – Measurements

The width was an easy part, but the height required some thought to account for the folds. After poking around the interwebs, I settled on having three folds. I had about 38 inches to apply towards the height and with the final number needing to be around 16″, I decided to use the whole length. You can see the pattern in Step 4.

Step 2 – Snip Snip

Once I had my plan mapped out, I ironed and then cut the fabric and lining.

NOTE: I used linen as lining, which I would not recommend doing. It matched the fabric well, but the bad part is that linen was not as rigid as the top fabric and caused some stretching and bunching.

Step 3 – Sewing around the edges

I aligned the two pieces of fabric facing in, and sewed around the perimeter, leaving about a 10-inch opening on the top side.

I left the top edge open, because that section will be folded over to create a pocket for the curtain rod.

Also, I used a 1-inch seam allowance. I figured it would help the shade retain a sturdier structure.

Next, I cut the corners off to create a cleaner corner and then flipped the form inside out. After pushing the corners out into points, I carefully ironed the edges to make them extra crisp.

Then, I did a top stitch on about 1.5 inches from side edges. This is to mimic a functioning Roman Shade and to secure the edges from inverting.

Step 4 – Planning and sewing down Faux Roman shade folds

Here’s the fun part! I played with different lengths and distances and I really liked the look when folds were stacked 2.5 inches apart.

Fold 1

I started with the bottom fold and worked on them one-by-one. It would have been too hard to pin and sew all folds at once, and I really did not want to end up with some strange pantaloons instead of a valance.

So, what I did was mark a line at 5.75″ and folded the fabric. Next, I measured 6.5 inches and folded this section in half in the opposite direction creating the first Roman Shade pleat. And the distance between the bottom of the shade and bottom of the first fold was now a perfect 2.5″!

Once folded, I aligned these two lines (5.75″ and 6.5″) front and back, and machine stitched the whole width of the fabric. I did about a quarter-inch seam and made sure all layers of the fabric were sewn together.

Fold 2

Once the first one was finished, I repeated the process. Sort of. I measured 2.5″ from the stitch line and folded it over. Then, I measured 6.5 inches and folded it in half again. Then I made sure the bottom edge and folds were parallel and 2.5 inches apart and sewed the fold in place again.

Fold 3

When I got to the third fold I repeated the process from Fold 2. The only difference being that I hand-stitched it on the back side, because I did not want the thread line to show on the front of the shade.

To make the process easier, I used a 2-inch curved needle and sewed through all layers of fabric. The only difference from the machine stitch I made was that I pushed the needle very gently through the last piece of fabric. I had to make sure the needle caught only the very surface of the fabric and the stitch didn’t show through on the “face” of the shade.

Rod Pocket

To finish the whole thing, I hand-stitched the very top of the fabric to create a curtain rod pocket. I made the rod pocket by folding 2 inches of fabric from the top. While doing this, I also closed the slit I left open in the first step.

And Here is my faux roman shade in its full glory

On paper, the process for this shade is pretty straight forward. However, I did run into some challenges by choosing linen as lining. As shown, I used paper clips as much as I could so fabric layers stay in place, but linen is not as sturdy as the top fabric and it kept stretching in sewing. So using the same type of fabric on both sides is something to keep in mind.

Let’s face it though, these are the things that make sewing and any crafty process fun. And seeing how happy it made my client, just made it all worth while.