5 Tips and Ideas for Making Roman Shades - A Tour of Roman Shades

2. Slatted Roman Shade
A slatted roman shade is a flat roman shade with slat sewn into the fabric at every row of rings. A slatted roman shade is good if you want a little more structure to your roman shade. Roman shades require some fuss when first being raised... adding ribs to a roman shade can help the pleats fold neater. Also, a ribbed look is a design choice.

There are several ways to add slats to a roman shade. You can sew horizontal seams and insert ribs or dowels, you can iron on rib tape and avoid the seams altogether... sew on rib loop tape.

Slatted roman shades are also a nice choice for wide roman shades.

This slatted roman shade has a contrasting band of fabric at the bottom and edged with a box pleated ruffle. At the top is a button-back box pleated valance.

3. Hobbled Roman Shade
Also known as a soft fold roman shade or tear drop roman shade. This is a roman shade that has permanent folds when it is lowered.

This is a wonderful look and a design decision. Keep in mind that this require about 3 times as much fabric and quite a bit of patience.

The folds are created by sewing rod pockets up the length of the shade and then hung with roman shade tape.

The photo to the left shows you an example of a wide hobbled roman shade and an average size hobbled roman shade.

4. London Shade
In the same family of roman shades is a london shade or london roman shade. This is a wonderful variation on the flat roman shade and relaxed roman shade.

A london shade is made the same as a roman shade, except that it has reverse box pleats at the cords.

A london shade only has 2 cords and the cords come in from the side edges about 1/4 of the full width. When raised, the ends will droop creating butterfly tails... and because there are no interior cords, the center will swag.

The box pleats add even more fullness to the swag and tails as the extra fabric spills over the rings as the shade is raised.

London shades work very well with larger windows. Be warned though, London Shades also require quite a bit of fuss when raised.

To add to the luxuriousness of a london shade, you can design them with piping along the edges of the pleats... add fringe to the bottom hem... even add contrasting fabric inside the box pleats.

The photo shows a set of pinch pleated drapes on each side of the london shade.

5. Austrian Shade
Although you may not think of an austrian shade as a roman shade is commonly referred to as a shirred roman shade.

The austrian shade requires austrian shade tape which is 2 cord shirring tape with roman shade rings attached. You would sew the austrian shade tape where each cord would go and shirr the shade vertically. Then you would shirr the shade horizontally... the photo shows the shade gathered onto a curtain rod.

It is part of the roman shade family because the basic construction is still the same. The only difference is that it's gathered.

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