Lamp Shade Adventure - Part 2

I had gotten it into my head that I had to have lace on my new lamp shade, so that’s what I went shopping for. And I had been looking for lamp shade tutorials and blog posts to see how others had done it to get some ideas. I found some nice tutorials here and here and here. But those tutorials were to cover a plain shade with fabric or to cover a wire frame with lace, neither of which exactly fit what I was doing. Anyway, back to the fabric. Here’s what I ended up buying at JoAnn’s.
I cut out my blue fabric and my lace fabric using my paper pattern and leaving about an inch all around.
I layered the fabric and lace and machine basted around all the edges to hold the two layers together.
I turned under the edge of the back seam and pinned it all together on my two wire rings. I should have paid better attention to how it was all fitting together at this time, but I just assumed when I had it all sewn together that things would fit together better and blindly and optimistically went on my merry way.
I sewed the bottom seam, as in the photo below, then later trimmed the edge.
At the top, because of the three wires joining the circle, I cut slits in my fabric, sewed around the ring where I could then sewed the rest down by hand. I sewed the back seam by machine and had to sew the very top and bottom by hand.
Here’s the lamp shade before I added the trim. Second place I should have evaluated and decided whether to keep going. But I really assumed that sheer will power of wanting it to look a certain way would make it so!
And here’s what my back seam looked like. Not bad really!
I hot glued the trim around the top and bottom edges.
Here’s the lamp in the bedroom.
And here’s what I learned.
1. There’s a reason most lamp shades you see are white, off-white, light tan, etc. A blue lamp shade really cuts down on the amount of light the lamp puts out into the room. Do not make a colored lamp shade unless you purposely want to limit the amount of light for the right kind of mood or setting. Stick with the light colors.
2. Without a stiff frame like in the first tutorial link, you really need to use a stiff covering so your shade does not look saggy like mine. If you have a stiff, well defined shade form, I think you have a lot more flexibility in how you cover it.

I do consider this lamp shade more pleasant than the ugly broken shade it replaced, but I am not really happy with it. It will do as a temporary shade. My next attempt will have two important features: 1) Use some sort of stiffener or interfacing so the shade will not be floppy or saggy and 2) do not use blue fabric! I need to finish up some other projects, give myself a little time before I try again and then I will try attempt number two at a new bedroom lamp shade!

If you’ve covered any lamp shades, please leave a comment with a link to a photo. I’d love to see yours! Eventually I will be on a mission to prove that this lamp shade will NOT get the better of me!