DIY Roman Shades

This is a project that I honestly was not sure I would be able to do.  I had this fabric that I found at Hancock Fabrics and I had the idea that there must be some way to make your own roman shade.  We have two nice windows in our kitchen that face our neighbors house (actually they look right into the neighbor's kitchen).  We didn't need to cover the windows completely - we actually quite like our neighbors and we often back and forth through the windows.  They even invited us to dinner through the window once, it was too cute.  Anyways, the windows did need to be dressed up and I wanted some kind of accent color for our yellow and white kitchen.  After a lot of googling, I came across this website at Martha Stewart and this one from HGTV.  Ugh, the photos had me drooling (I love the one with the ribbon applique) and I thought I could do it, but wasn't that thrilled since I have such limited time between grad school courses, externship, and lab work.  So, I was even more excited when I found this post on how to make roman shades from cheap mini-blinds from Target.  Many thanks to Jenny for her brilliant idea.  There's another tutorial here if you want more info on this project.

Here's an in progress shot...

And a couple of afters...

They look fab and they work great.  I couldn't be happier and since this first attempt I've made three more, one for the bathroom (with a ribbon applique!!) and two for the living room to replace the mini-blinds that were there.  I still have another to make for the living room and might even be making two more for the guest bedroom.  Basically, I'm crazy about roman shades now.