Saturday, September 27, 2014

Magnetic Window Shades

If you have a metal front door, how do you cover it? Our solution for the last 4 Years has been store bought paper sticky blinds. And after 4 years of peaking, opening and closing, they were ugly.
See, ugly!

So, I finally got sick of them. And decided to do something about them. I wanted drapes, but i did not want to drill holes in my metal door for a rod. So, i saw a post about using magnets to hold a drape to the door and decided to try.

I bought drapery fabric at Fabricland, and magnets with adhesive backs at Michael's. But before i broke out the sewing machine, I decided to try using the magnets to hold the fabric to the door.... HUGE PROBLEM, they werent strong enough!

So, I searched for stronger magnets, and found these at Princess Auto, for less than $3/pack!
They were so strong the packages stuck together on the rack.

I tested them with the fabric on the door, and Eureka! Success!

The rest of the project is basic, I sewed small seams on the sides, and a large hem at the top and the bottom. The key here is to leave gaps in the hem where the magnets can be put in after. I left 3 gaps at the top, at the sides and in the middle, and 2 gaps at the bottom, just at the corners.

See the gap in the seam?


The top magnets hold the drape to the door. The bottom magnets are just there to keep the drape from swinging around when the door opens, and hold the ends where you want them.








Here's the final product, and considering I did these over two nights while my daughter was asleep, they aren't half bad! I am very happy with how they turned out.
Pretty!