Here’s a fun little hack for making a Roman shade with very little sewing and very little fuss.

For this project, you’ll start with an inexpensive ready-made shade—the link to the one we used is included in the instructions—and use our sailcloth to create a custom cover for it. That’s really the magic of this project: you get the functionality of a ready-made shade with the beautiful, finished look of your favorite sailcloth print.

Our shade attaches to the inside of the window frame with a tension mechanism, so there’s no drilling or hardware installation required. It makes hanging the shade incredibly easy, but there is an important safety consideration: because the shade is tension-mounted, a determined little person could potentially pull it down from the window. For that reason, we do not recommend this project for rooms where small children sleep, play, or spend unsupervised time. We love it for family-friendly spaces and especially for an older child’s room.

You can stitch your hems and edges if you’d like a more traditional finish, but we made ours without even turning on the sewing machine. That’s part of what makes this project so much fun!

One thing to keep in mind as you work: your Roman shade will be visible from the outside of the house when it’s closed, so pay a little extra attention to how you finish the edges and how your fabric looks from the back.

Other than that, this one is wonderfully simple. It’s inexpensive, fast, and a great way to make a completely custom window treatment from just a little bit of sailcloth.

Easy, fun, and very highly recommended.