DIY Lamp shade Part II

I once again ventured out and did another DIY lamp shade project. I had 2 lamp shades in our living room that were both the wrong colors. One of them I tried a previous DIY makeover on and it was a BIG  fail. I tried to spray paint stripes on it and it was atrocious. This time, I decided to use the same fabric on both and recover each one. It is really easy and I tried to document each step.

First, you make a pattern of the lamp shade with tracing paper. I have a lot of tracing paper lying around, because that is what we use a lot in the Architecture World to help with design. So you wrap the tracing paper around the lamp shade and then you trace the edges of the shade onto the tracing paper.

Next, cut the pattern out of the tracing paper and place it on the fabric. I actually traced the pattern with a pen on the interior side of the fabric, so that I wouldn’t have pen marks on the outside for everyone to see.

Then, cut the pattern out of the fabric. The pattern from the tracing paper was the exact edges of the shade, so be sure and leave at least at 1/4″ around the whole pattern so you will be able to fold it over the shade onto the inside. I would suggest even leaving a little more space, just in case. I could have used a little more fabric in the end to fold over. Here are my lamp shades waiting to be recovered. See the one with the blue stripes? That was my previous attempt at the DIY lamp shade makeover.

 Next, I took them out to the front porch with my Super 77 spray adhesive. I sprayed the inside of the fabric all over with the adhesive and then wrapped it around the shade. This part can be tricky to get it lined up perfectly. I was glad to have the pen tracing on the inside so I could have a guide of where the edge of the shade should line up. Plus, you need to make sure to pull it tight and get all the wrinkles out.

After it is firmly adhered to the shade, you can use fabric glue to glue the seam down and the top and bottom edges to the inside. Be sure and fold the edge of the seam over and glue for a clean finish.

There it is. All in all, it probably cost me $7, which was the price of the fabric and that covered both lamp shades and I have a half a yard left over. I had all the other supplies from previous projects and I already had the shades.

Here is my little assistant and the final project back on the lamp.  I think I might buy some trim to put on the top and bottom edges to finish it off a little more, but for now, it is good to use.