New Window Treatments AT LAST

Unfortunately, this is really the only true BEFORE I have of the original, dirty, broken blinds that were in the master suite. 

Lovely, right? 

A little over a year ago, I got this great idea to make faux roman shades based on this tutorial at the Little Green Notebook (aka Pearl Street Interiors) and bought this material: 

and then I let that sit around for another year... 

In the meantime, this past February, we decided to finally replace the gross blinds we'd been living with and bought some inexpensive light-filtering mini blinds from Home Depot.  Quick and easy to install, and SO much better looking than what we'd been living with, we couldn't figure out why we hadn't done it a year earlier. 

At that same time, my dad came down to visit and help with a few projects -- biggest of all being the painting of our bedroom.  Valspar Premium in Pale Cowslip 1. I love it. LOVE it. My husband is okay with it. The color makes me feel happy and sunny and warm, although you can't really see the color whatsoever in that last picture... 

Anyway, jumping ahead to the month of June -- I finally found made the time to complete the actual window treatment I'd been intending to make all along.  I like my room to be VERY dark when I sleep, so I knew I wanted to incorporate a lining into the shades (which was not included in the tutorial, so I hemmed and hawed over how to do it.  In the end, I created a sort of slip cover and actually left all the mini blind veins intact.  I used a button hole for the cord to come through and did all the sewing on my machine except for the closure at the bottom, which I sewed by hand.  

(you can see the new paint MUCH better in these pictures: L-O-V-E, right?)

And for anyone wondering, they do open higher than I show in the picture.  I just didn't. 

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There are a few things I could  have taken a little more time on and done a little better... maybe if I wasn't 9 months pregnant I would have. Haha