My mom bought fabric to make curtains for his room, and she just so happen to have an extra yard for me to use for this project. I started with a very basic (and bland) lampshade.
I then took some wrapping paper to draw out a pattern for this particular lampshade. I carefully moved it along the paper, tracing with a felt marker, since the mechanical pencil I found kept ripping through the paper. I'm sure if I was doing this on a table, the pencil would have been cleaner.
After I traced the lampshade, I cut it out and made sure that it fit around the lampshade. I didn't want to waste any of the fabric, so I wanted to make sure it was going to work before I did anything rash.
Now, in order to make sure that the fabric fit over the edges, I was going to have to add an inch the whole way around this pattern. I did this a very unscientific way. When I laid the pattern on the (wrong side of the) fabric, I used my bent finger to give me an estimate of an inch, and I put a dot on the fabric. I marked any of the turns/corners with an X and connected all of the lines. One challenging part was at the corners, since I had to go an inch down and out in order to keep the same shape. I could have used a ruler, and it would have been far more accurate, but I was too lazy to find a ruler and didn't want to use the yard stick.
I was fairly confident that this new pattern would work out, and I started cutting the fabric. Once it was cut out, I wanted to make sure it would sort of fit, and it worked out perfectly. I also noticed at this time how wrinkled my fabric was. I decided to bite the bullet and actually iron it. I wasn't going to go through this much trouble to have it end up wrinkly.
As suggested from another blog, I started working at the seam in the original lampshade. I secured it down the side with tacky glue and folded up the bottom edge under the shade. I ran into my first problem with the prongs on the top of the shade.
I pushed the fabric against the post so that I could see where the fabric needed cut, and I cut a small mark at that point. I also had to do the same thing on the corners of the top of the shade in order for them to lay flat.
I got all the way around and folded the last part of the fabric so that it lined up with the edge of the shade.
I wanted a really clean line, so I decided to go back to the iron to get this fold. It still worked, since I hadn't attached the bottom or top of the panel yet (as shown in the picture above).
I had already ironed it before where I thought it would need folded when I started the project, so now I just folded over a little more. Funny story: the iron was out of water when I started this project. So I refilled it when I ironed out the whole piece of fabric. When I went to iron this little part, the excess water leaked everywhere. No big deal? Right? Nope. Remember that blue marker that I used because it was easier than a pencil? It ended up bleeding through the various layers.
I thought about not caring, but the rest of the project looked so good that I didn't want this to ruin it. I found a Shout wipe and managed to get the blue out. I glued the rest of the edges down, and I was done... or so I thought.
I don't know if you can see, but the inside has very messy edges. That didn't bother me a ton until I took it into his bedroom and put the light into the shade.
I could clearly see the edges through the shade when the light was one, and it bothered me. Again, I had spent too much time to do a poor job, so I went back for further adjustments. Since the glue was still mostly wet, I was able to pull off one edge at a time, and fold it over itself. The fold lined up with the original shade's fold, and it had such a cleaner look!
Once I put the light back on, it looked great!
And that's Micah's new lampshade, made at no cost to me (thanks Mom), but would have been a fairly inexpensive project if I had actually shopped for the fabric. I think I used about half of the yard.
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