Upcycling an old lamp

 It has long been my desire to make a lampshade for a lamp that was gifted to me and I have at last accomplished this.

With no real idea of how to go about it, I ordered some lampshade backing which is stiff kind of polythene stuff on which to mount your fabric.

The fabric was an easy choice as I have mountains of the stuff from my sewing obsession period!  Having chosen a pretty blue-ish country pattern, I set about making templates of the wire sections to be covered.

I used stiff card and simply pressed it against a section of the wire skeleton shade.  As there are two distinct sizes on my shade, I had to make two templates.

Here are the two completed templates.  I used these to draw around to make both the fabric sections and also the backing mounts. 

After drawing four of each template on to my backing mounts and four of each on to the fabric, I cut out the sections.  I think cut out the pieces.

The polythene backing came with a sticky side so I was able to mount my fabric very easily to each piece. I left extra fabric at the top and bottom of each section so that I could loop the over the wire frame to give better stability.

Then the fun begins!  I don’t know about you, but I’m not so good with a hot glue gun.  I always get hot glue on my fingers, which burns like hell and this time was no exception.  I used the glue gun to stick each section to the wire shade frame, tucking the extra fabric over the wire and sticking it down.

I then went down the length of each section with the hot glue gun to ensure they were all stuck well, leaving no gaps.

Once this was done, I found some oddments of cream ribbon and used them to cover the seams of each section and finish the bottom of the shade.  I found a piece of red and cream binding to finish the top edge of the shade.

By no means is this a complete success, there are many flaws, but for my very first lampshade I’m extremely happy!

 

Finished lamp - What do you think?