#DIYshade

Jan 26
3 min

NEW Fabrics - Design and Print your own Lampshade Fabric

New for 2023 we’ve extended our lampshade fabric printing range, adding two new high-quality fabrics selected specially to make your bespoke lampshade design stand out from the crowd! Pick from our new luxurious satin or hardwearing 100% natural cotton, both of which offer different fabric finishes and can be used with our standard sized lampshade panels. Today we’ll introduce you to all of the benefits of printing onto our satin and natural cotton, as well as share the detai

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Oct 7, 2022
6 min

Soft Shade Making Series - Sewing & Glueing a Lampshade Trim

Just the creative finishing touches are ahead of us as we come to complete the soft lampshade, featured in our Soft Shade making Series and today it’s trim time! Whether you want to ensure that your shade accurately reflects a bygone time or pulls out the colours in your chosen fabric, it’s the easiest way to add masses of personality to your shade. With countless types and colours of trim to choose from and plenty of placement opportunities we'll show you the techniques and

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Sep 1, 2022
3 min

Soft Shade Making Series - Making a Gimbal Cover

Getting to grips with the professional finishing touches is what really makes a handmade soft lampshade sing! Falling straight into this category is making a gimbal cover or tidy to sit around the gimbal arms. This tiny detail, as well as serving a functional purpose, can also be a noticeable highlight adding extra personality to your soft shade. Follow the tutorial below to learn how to make a gimbal cover or tidy for the next steps in your Soft Shade Making journey. What is

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Aug 2, 2022
7 min

Soft Shade Making Series - Making and Fitting a Lining

Next up in our Soft Shade Making Series is how to make and fit a lining to your soft lampshade. With several styles of lining and choices of fabrics, ranging from traditional to modern, in this post we'll take you through what a lining brings to a lampshade, which shaped frames can be lined and of course detailed step-by-step instructions on how to fit your lining. Why does a lampshade need a lining? Lining your lampshade gives it a complete and professional finish, hiding a

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Jun 22, 2022
3 min

Soft Shade Making Series: How to sew Lampshade Stitch or Streetly Stitch

Hand sewing is an essential part of making soft lampshades and in today’s post, we're sharing how to sew lampshade stitch or streetly stitch. The most commonly used stitch amongst traditional shade makers, lampshade stitch helps firstly secure the outer cover, and then the lining to the binding on the frame and it's the next stage in our Soft Shade Making Series, showing you how to make a soft lampshade from start to finish. What tools and materials do I need for hand sewing

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Jun 10, 2022
5 min

5 tips for Upcycling and Renovating a Second Hand Lampshade

Stumbling across a second-hand lampshade that has potential, whether vintage or relatively new, opens up a Pandora’s box of creative possibilities, but how do you prepare it for its new life? In today’s post, we share our tips, and those from our expert makers, on how to lay the foundations for taking an upcycled frame from someone's trash to fabulous lampshade treasure! 1. Stripping the frame Traditional style lampshades tend to be made of fabric and the majority are lined,

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May 17, 2022
5 min

Soft Shade Making Series: Making a soft shade cover from a pattern

Making a well-fitting outer cover for your soft shade is critical to achieving an eye-catching and considered lampshade and today, we pick up from our previous post in our Soft Shade Making Series - How to Make a Pattern. In this post we show you how to transfer your lampshade pattern to your chosen fabric, tips on sewing it together and how to fit it to your pre-bound soft lampshade making frame, all with step by step photo tutorials. Pattern Making Recap Our previous Soft S

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Apr 28, 2022
3 min

Book Review - Lampshades by Katrin Cargill

Rated highly by our professional lampshade makers, ‘Lampshades’ by Katrin Cargill at first glance might look like a very average and potentially dated book, but digging a little deeper this lampshade making gem offer oodles of inspiration, excellent instructional techniques and lampshade styles from the 1990s that can easily be brought up to date. It’s time to soak up some more lampshade making wisdom! Katrin Cargill has written over 25 books on everything from making soft fu

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Apr 14, 2022
7 min

Soft Shade Making Series - How to Make a Pattern

With the preparations for making a traditional soft shade covered in our Soft Shade Making Series, it’s time to talk patterns! Making an accurate pattern from your frame is essential to getting a beautiful, pucker-free fit for the outer fabric of your lampshade. With several essential stages to cover we've packed this post with three easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions, alongside hints and tips from professional makers, to help you perfect this important skill. Lined and

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Mar 29, 2022
4 min

Lampshade Kit Hack #9 - Using Vinyl as a Lampshade Inner

Want to make a shade that stands out from the crowd? How about using colourful vinyl on the inside of your shade? Easy to apply and economical to boot, our opaque gloss vinyl gives your shade an interesting pop of colour and with 19 colours in our range, you won't be short on choice! Read on to find out why you should give this creative hack a try and importantly, how to apply the vinyl to your Lampshade Making Kit. What is Vinyl covering? Originally used in our banner making

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Mar 16, 2022
5 min

Soft Shade Making Series - How to bind a lampshade frame

Our third post in our Soft Shade Making Series is about laying the foundations for the lampshade ahead, namely binding your lampshade frame. To help you master this important skill, that's integral to holding your outer fabric and lining in place, we’ll take you step-by-step through how to bind your frame, what to consider and prepare, as well as the tools and materials you’ll need to start your soft shade making journey! Why do I need to bind a frame? Binding the frame means

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Feb 10, 2022
4 min

Soft Shade Making Series: Binding Tape

In our second post of our new Soft Shade Making Series, today we're talking about binding tapes and how they are an essential part of making a traditional soft lampshade. A binding tape’s main function is to give your chosen fabric a base to be sewn into, and we'll explain why using the right tape gets you the right results, how to measure tape for a frame and what widths of tape to use. Binding tapes explored Binding tape, or India tape as it’s also commonly known, is a whit

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Jan 18, 2022
4 min

Soft Shade Making Series: Traditional Lampshade Frames

Lampshade making comes in many forms and although making ‘hard shades’ is a popular and easy way to achieve a stunning new lampshade, our NEW Soft Shade Making series focuses on getting you started making traditional lampshades. Soft Shade Frames Getting to know your basic materials is an important part when starting out in any craft, and can save time and mistakes in the future. There are a few different methods involved in covering a traditional lampshade and a range of gim

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Jul 16, 2021
6 min

Dannells Digital Lampshade Printing with Tide and Isle

As well as being specialists in all things lampshades, did you know at Dannells we are print specialists too? By combining our knowledge and expertise of the two, we're able to print unique artwork and illustrations directly onto fabrics selected for their suitability for lampshade making. And what better way to celebrate the success of our printing service, by showing off the fantastic lampshades of Tide and Isle, a new venture by long-time lampshade maker Lucy Lo-Vel, using

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Apr 29, 2021
3 min

3 Essential Olfa tools for lampshade making

‘Give us the tools, and we will finish the job’ the proverb says, but what if those tools were made the job twice as quick and offered all sorts of creative opportunities? This is where our NEW range of Olfa products comes in helping you improve your lampshade making, and we’ve selected three products we think you’ll love. Olfa Rotary cutter If you’re making lampshades en masse or simply want to speed up your shade making, using a rotary cutter to cut away the fabric from the

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Apr 27, 2021
5 min

Lampshade Inspiration - The art of free machine embroidery

Via our #memadeshade Instagram competition we’ve seen our lampshade makers use a variety of art and craft skills, as the basis for making beautiful lampshades. Today we wanted to shine a light - sorry, no pun intended ;) - on free machine embroidery and introduce you to the principles, techniques and some of our talented makers who create stunning lampshades, using this imaginative textile art. So what is free machine embroidery? Also known as free motion embroidery, free mac

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Mar 26, 2021
3 min

Vintage Inspiration - Lampshade Making Book Review

For today’s modern lampshade makers, there are plenty of sources of inspiration, but looking back at the styles, techniques, methods and materials used in vintage books, can literally be a light bulb moment, so we’ve fished out a couple of our favourites from the Dannells library. Lampshade Making History Lampshade making is a craft that has stood the test of time, since the invention of the light bulb in 1879 and its domestic introduction into homes not long after. The Victo

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Mar 11, 2021
3 min

Book review - Sewing Lampshades by Joanne Heptinstall

On opening the book, Sewing Lampshades by Joanna Heptinstall, our hearts skipped a little beat. Hit with an array of colourful lampshade images and a foreword from Joanna Heptinstall that oozes confidence in her craft, we knew that we were in for a treat. Time to grab a cuppa and take a seat on the sofa to read, read, read! Joanna Heptinstall was already a trained upholsterer when she stumbled across and old, damaged lampshade that needed some TLC. After plenty of research, s

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Feb 22, 2021
2 min

3 creative services for next level lampshades

Pimping your lampshade is easier than you think. There’s the DIY route, that we all know and love, using one of our lampshade making kits with beautiful fabric, sophisticated trims or coloured, metallic or even neon PVC's, to bring your shade to life. Or you could use one of our 3 creative services, to really enhance your shade making and take it to the next level. Pick from designing your own fabric, creating your own bespoke shade dimensions or trying out one of our excitin

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Jan 15, 2021
3 min

Book Review - 50 Thrifty DIY Shades by Adeline Lobut

50 Thrifty DIY Shades is book based around you guessed it.…decorative shades that can be made up of scraps of fabrics, bits and bobs and unusual materials. Packed with traditional lampshades and more quirky upcycling ideas for making shades, there are plenty of interesting projects, and skills, to get your teeth into, or as always to inspire your own lampshade making practise. When reading a book review we always find it interesting to found out a bit about the author and the

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