Decorative Rod Roman Shade

You may have seen those shades that hang from a decorative rod yet operate as Roman shades. Now how do they do that? The lift lines that are used to pull the shade up and down have to somehow be threaded along a headrail and out one side. But you cannot see any cords at the top of the decorative rod. One of my customers was so kind to send me the following photos and explanation of his "joint" project with his wife.

Tom C. from Richardson, Texas writes: "My wife and I want to thank you for your excellent web site on making Roman shades. My wife wanted to make some shades and had several books, but the instructions were not very detailed. Your site gave detailed instructions for every step. I printed them for reference. We also bought our supplies from you and they were excellent quality.

The design my wife wanted was somewhat different from what you detailed. She wanted to use a wrought iron rod to hang them. I adapted your design for the pulley board to raise/lower the shade. I painted the board white and mounted it below the rod and behind the shade so it would not show. My wife is highly skilled at sewing, but not too skilled at the layout/geometry. I'm a retired engineer, so I did all the layout, math and mounting."

As you can see in the close-ups shown below, the essential points of mounting the shade are:

• The "headrail" which contains the pulleys (or screw eyes) is mounted below the decorative rod. You could also mount the headrail inside the top of the window.
• The headrail is narrower than the shade so that it does not show.
• The shade is NOT attached to the headrail, but rather hangs from the decorative rod mounted above the headrail. You can use large decorative rings as shown, or make fabric tabs to slide over the rod.
• The lift lines are strung in the normal manner up and through the pulleys on the headrail so that the shade can be raised and lowered.