Hello there everyone and welcome to my first post for the Helmar Creative Team, 2019! With the cooler weather starting to arrive and my very tired looking living room lampshades needing either replacing or a 'do-over' I decided on the latter. A couple of years ago I had found a beautiful but small piece of upholstery fabric at the op-shop so I decided to use this, I had just enough!
What you will need:
Helmar Fabric Glue
Fabric
Scissors
Paper
Sewing machine and thread
Pins
Firstly, you need to make a pattern, my lampshades are four sided so I only needed to make a small pattern for one panel and cut four of them, including a 1 cm seam allowance for each joining edge. If you have a circular style lampshade just take a large piece of paper and clip/pin it to the main seam, roll or wrap the paper slowly over your lampshade pressing the outline as you go. I made my small pattern the same way just by using my fingers to press the outline of the shape.
Cut out your fabric.
As my lampshade has four panels I now place right sides together and sew them using a 1 cm seam and a small stitch.
Press or finger press your seams open once stitched. You can sew all seams together and slide over your frame but as I am covering over the top of the old fabric I am leaving one seam open and gluing mine to the existing lampshade using Helmar Fabric Glue.
Glue the first seam to the frame (seam allowances open) and continue around the frame (one seam at a time) until you get to the join then glue the other side and then tidy up any threads etc leaving the seam neat.
Remember: All seams will show through the lampshade once the light is turned on so it is important to get the seams in the right places and straight.
Once the side seam/s is dry you can glue the top and bottom to the lamp. Be sure the edges are straight and glue them carefully down, corners first moving towards the centre. You don't need to use a lot of glue as it sticks very well and you don't want any 'overflow' on your fabric.
Depending on the look and style of your lamp you can go on to add bindings or trimmings etc but I'm very pleased with the new look of my lamps and feel it will 'cosy' my living room area up nicely for the cooler weather.
I hope you enjoyed this DIY tutorial using Helmar Fabric Glue and consider giving one of your lamps a 'do-over'.
Have a wonderful day
Jeanette 🙂
