How to make a lampshade x

So last weekend I went to my local fabric shop Millie Moon for a class on making your own lampshades. It was by far one of the best classes I've done because it was fun and relatively simple to make.

So Harriet took us step by step through the making of our lampshade which required alot of sticking and a small amount of cutting out. We were able to choose our own fabric from the whole shop and I chose one called ''Get a clue Nancy Drew'' by Moda  because I loved the TV show as a child and the fabric design was vintage Nancy Drew books.

We were each given two lampshade rings one for the top and one for the bottom................

So the next part was to choose which part of our fabric we wanted to show on our shade and then to cut a piece of special sticky backed white lampshade plastic to strengthen our fabric on the back. We then had to stick special doublesided sticky tape onto the fabric, I kept saying ''It's just like scrapbooking!''.........

This is the fabric all ready for unpeeling the tape backing.....................

once unpeeled it was a simple case of sticking the bottom and top edges of fabric back on itself to form a neat edge.............................

and this is the right side of the fabric all stuck down.....................

Next 2 of us worked in unison to roll the two lampshade wires onto the fabric top and bottom and then to stick the bottom pieces of fabric over the rings for a lovely neat finish.

And here are all our finished lampshades (mine is top right)..............

And here we all are with our completed lampshades and our brilliant teacher Harriet who is next to me with the long hair and fawn outfit.........................

Collage your home with Gaynor....................

This morning, I bunked off church, I know bad girl, and headed down to one of our two rather fabulous fabric and findings shops, this one being the wonderful Millie Moon. They have a huge range of fabric both here in Wells and in their home store of Frome and put on a variety of classes in sewing, ceramic button making, coffee and sewing days and today I did the ''Collage your home'' class. This was taught by Gaynor, ably assisted by her lovely husband who provided tea and coffee and Dr Who banter.....................well crafting without Dr Who wouldn't be crafting now would it.
So onto the class. Gaynor makes beautiful collages pictures using fabric, papers and trimmings, with applique and embroidery and machine stitching to give them that extra pazzazz.

 

This is the picture we were all shown as a showcase for the class, and Gaynor talked us through her process.
So me and 2 other lovely crafters Kate and Nicki set to with our paper and pencils to design a collaged picture of our own. The first thing was to draw the size of the aperture in the picture mount so we knew how much room we had to play with and then fill that space with our design. I decided to do mine horizontally rather than landscape and initially my house was based on my grandparent's Victorian vicarage as it had so many happy memories. However sometimes things can be too complex so I went back to a more basic house design.

The next thing to do was to chose three pieces of background material for the sky, mid-ground and grass. Gaynor had choices of material and paper so I went for a velvet sky material, with music paper for my mid-ground and a lemon patterned paper with white floral detail for the grass. This was all stitch or glued onto a piece of watercolour paper.

The next part was choosing materials for the house itslef. I chose a simple brown paper for the house shape, old newspaper for the roof and a patterned paper for the chimneys. The door was from ''Macbeth'' and the windows old railway tickets. Next it was the details. I found an owl which I had to have as my ''thing'' and I cut out some dragonflies and some flowers. There were also polka dot buttons and I used a green fabric to cut out some grass. Once this was all assembled I embroidered on some detailing using satin stitch and chain stitch, including some birds in the sky. I added French knot flowers and the flowers and buttons and dragonflies. I also added some fine ricrac to the roof and some pink pompoms which covered up a mistake I made in the sewing, and here is the final results.

I'm really please with how my picture has turned out.
Here is Kate's picture which has some beautiful detailing...................

  

 This is Nicki's house. She brought a lovely tag with her to use as a focus from a Paddington Bear which makes up the main body of her house. What a lovely way to use memorabilia.

If you get the chance to do a class give it a go, you never know what skills you'll learn or what amazing projects you'll come away with. Oh MM also have a lush blog so check it out here.