screen printed roman blind project - with how to pictures

After what seems like months and months, a few weekends ago I finally managed to get the blind for my creative space/spare bedroom finished off and hung up.


It all started at the beginning of the summer when I was going to my Textiles class and I hand screen printed a big piece of fabric. The whole printing process was done in the same way as described my previous post except this time I wanted to make a negative image of my design. So last time I used a stencil like this, made with paper.

For the negative stencil I used sticky back plastic (which took AGES to cut out) and looked like this.

So following the steps in the previous post I printed in alternate baby pink and pale lemon yellow.

Creating the blind was pretty tricky as I wanted to follow the line of the pattern but I hadn't been exact in printing the pattern square which just made it all a bit complicated and I ended up having to make it up a bit as I went along. Normally it would be easy to make the blind if your fabric pattern was square to the weave of the fabric.

Here is all the bits and pieces I needed to make up the blind:

• blind tape
• cord
• velcro
• rods
• toggle and thingie to wind cord round
• black out lining (I didn't want the sun to shine through the fabric as it would alter the colour of the print)

So I squared off the lining fabric using the corner of my dining table and my quilting squarer. I cut the lining to the size that I actually wanted my blind to be so that there wasn't bulky edges. As the lining was blackout lining and does't fray so I could get away with this. 

I wanted the edging of the back of the blind to look like this...

So to do this took a bit of figuring out and in the end I ironed a seam in the printed fabric where I wanted its edge to be.

 And then pinned the line of stitch so that when folded the ironed seam would fall to the edge of the lining fabric.

 I checked it all lined up properly before stitching.

 So I stitched both sides of the blind this way so I had a big tube. Then with the fabric folded as in the above picture I stitched along the bottom of the blind to make a big sack.


Next a 'D' shape bit of wood which I had cut to size was inserted into the bottom of the sack and this acts like weight for the blind to help it sit straight.

Next was to pin and stitch the bling tape on where I wanted the rods to sit that would create the folds in the blind. 

Next I inserted the rods into the blind tape and stitched them in place at the edges.

Then to finish off the top of the blind I ironed down the seams then stitched the velcro along the top

 So on the right side of the fabric you see a big rectangle of stitching where the velcro is stitched on

 Then using the blind cord I rigged it up using 4 lengths, which you can sort of see in the pic below. I just pined them at the top to secure. When the blind is hung up its those lengths of blind cord that get fed through the little eyelets.

 Almost there...I painted this 1"x1" bit of wood which is where the blind is hung from. It gets screwed onto the wall (cue hubby), the little eyelets screwed into the bottom and the blind cords rigged up through them and hey presto its done.

Here is the blind hanging up in the 'studio' / creative corner of my spare room!