Story of a Shade – Lovely Liberty

I was recently commissioned to make a couple of lampshades as part of a whole room make over in a Georgian gentleman’s residence. The room in question was the gentleman’s study, however when the house was full of guests it doubled up as an extra guest bedroom. The Lovely Liberty lampshade was one of 2 for the room. Both had quite different briefs. This lampshade needed to be soft and gentle with blues and reds as the main colours. However there also needed to be a forest green silk trim and a pop of gold to compliment the window treatments.

The client chose an oval frame from my charity shop stash, but remained undecided about the lining. I stripped the old frame, keeping the face fabric as most of it was still in quite good condition. The bound the top and bottom rings with cotton India tape.

The client chose an oval frame from my charity shop stash, but remained undecided about the lining. I stripped the old frame, keeping the face fabric as most of it was still in quite good condition. Then I set about binding the top and bottom rings with cotton India tape.

I found a gorgeous liberty fabric that could almost have been printed for the brief. There were strong blues and reds and even a hint of the forest green. The light green back ground matched the existing window treatments in the study perfectly. The only thing missing was a pop of gold. We’ll come back to that later!

This was to be a dainty little shade so I kept the top pinch pleats quite small. About 5mm. The fabric pattern had a linier repeat with visible horizontal colours ways so I had to be very accurate maintaining the fabric grain in line with my pleats.

Then I pulled gathers onto the bottom ring. Pins, pins, lots of pins! Once I was happy with the position of the pleats and the tension of the gathers, I secured both the top and bottom rings with lampshade stitch. I kept my travel stitches small so that each holding stitch caught the edge of each pleat. This assured that the pleats remained crisp and the tension tight.

Habotai silk was eventually decided upon for the lining. Beautiful for that extra bit of luxury and fabulous for defusing light. The lining was to be taught on the bottom ring and gathered to the top ring. There was quite a difference in the circumference of the two rings which allowed for a glamourous number of pinch pleats to the top ring. As can be seen in the image the face fabric pleats and the lining pleats follow the same direction.

I secured everything in place and then used some of the original light green silk frame face fabric to make the gimbal tidies. Just by chance the original light green was exactly the same colour as the liberty lawn background.

I looked to my trimming stash, then samples. Worked on a couple of other projects for a couple of days. Had a search through my silk bias scraps for inspiration and then to my silk dupion stash and found some beautiful gold. Piping!!!

I used a very fine cord to create the most delicate piping. Hand stitched the piping in place and the handmade bias in the forest green. Finished. And completely in line with the brief. The client was delighted.

Jacqueline runs 2-day, bespoke handmade lampshade workshops at scheduled times throughout the year. You can also join a 1-2-1, 2 or 3 day master class by special arrangment. Do come and join us!