A couple of weeks ago, I came across
this tutorial for Fabric Covered Roller Shades on Pinterest. I immediately
pinned it to my
Project Airstream board because I knew it was the perfect solution to replace the hideous 1970's wall to wall curtains that we took out of our Airstream. I kept the idea for those cute fabric covered roller shades in the back of my mind, and on one of the many days that we were shopping at Lowes last month I decided to grab a few of the cheap vinyl roller shades and experiment.
Now if you can't tell from the title of this post, I did NOT start out using my hot glue gun first. Honestly I thought for sure that the hot glue would melt the vinyl and make a huge mess. So I kept my trusty hot glue gun in the drawer and tried a few other things.
My first attempt was with spray adhesive {yes I know it's number 2 in the picture, but it was the one I tried first}. It was a major FAIL! The spray adhesive was way too sticky and it was nearly impossible to get the fabric attached to the shade without a ton a wrinkles. I sprayed the fabric and carefully placed it onto a scrap piece of roller shade, but it was really crooked and wrinkled. So I tried to reposistion it....and it just went downhill from there. Needless to say, spray adhesive is not the way to go when making fabric covered roller shades!
After the spray adhesive failed, I did a little more research and found a couple of people who said they used fabric glue. So I picked up a big bottle {for $12} at the fabric store, and came home all excited to make this project work the second time around. I was so sure that the fabric glue was going to work that I started with the actual shade and not a scrap. The only problem was that I think I was a little too excited because I used way too much fabric glue, which then soak through my fabric and left a gross dried glue film all the way up both sides of my roller shade...not a pretty look. I attempted to salvage the roller shade by covering the edges with some white ribbon, and it turned out okay. But I was not going to take the time to line all the edges of the {7 other} roller shades with ribbon...so it was on to plan C!
Plan C included my trusty hot glue gun {who I should probably apologize to for doubting}! I pulled out a scrap piece of roller shade, plugged in my hot glue gun, and decided that even if it instantly melted a huge hole right through the darn roller shade that I was at least going to give it a try! And surprise, surprise it worked! No melted hole, no soaking through the fabric, no weird dried glue film....just a perfectly attached piece of fabric!
As of now I don't have a single shade finished and hanging to share with you, but I do at least know HOW I'm going to go about doing it now! And hopefully this post will help anybody who is thinking about making a cute {but not nearly as simple as it seems} Fabric Covered Roller Shade. When I do get all my roller shades covered and hanging in the Airstream, I will be sure to share a few pictures. And just in case you missed it, the moral of the story today is "Never Underestimate the Power of a Hot Glue Gun"!
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