Saturday, March 10, 2012

Repurposing old blinds into beautiful shades

Since we moved into our new home, I have looked at our old mini-blinds with a combination of disgust and frustration. I'm not ready to upgrade our whole home to real wood blinds, as I'd want them to match the floors  which we have also yet to upgrade. I thought I'd have to just learn to live with these aging metal & plastic blinds  until I found this tutorial online and tweaked it a little bit. For example, she buys new blinds but I liked that I could re-purpose our old ones, as I am a fan of both upcycling and saving money. 

And here is the finished product! It took about 2 hours to complete. It is a no-sew project but I did end up sewing the edges for a more finished look, rather than gluing them. In the future I will probably use a heavier fabric like in the tutorial or at least line it with muslin. But for this window I still wanted sun to come in and I liked that this fabric was fun and light and matched the splash of color I have been using in our kitchen. 


The cost of this project was about $10 for 2 yards of fabric, I already had the fabric glue (about $4)- so try it and see how you can primp one of your rooms! The price is right :)


Can't wait to recreate some of our other windows. 

1 comment:

  1. In case Jenny from the original blog doesn't answer my question due to the huge number of comments, I have one for you! After you cut all the thin, ladder threads in each set, do you cut off one of the lift cords (that has the ladder threads attached to it) on each side too? It looks like she did, but it isn't mentioned in the instructions...

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