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. https://www.dannellsblog.com/soft-shade-

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

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

The Dannells’ trade fair tour bus is still on the move! We’re excited to be attending The April Interiors Show, a curtain and blind makers show at Cheltenham Racecourse on April 25th, showcasing our Lampshade Making products and supplies. With over 50 exhibitors we’ll be surrounded by high-quality fabrics suppliers, curtain and blind hardware and many expert curtain and blind makers. If you’re a curtain and blind maker, this show is for you! Who’s hosting the show? The Curtai

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

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

Making your own lampshades means the sky is your limit in terms of the materials, design and shape you opt for and today's Parchment Fluted Lampshade is no different. Using our Perga Natural Parchment Lampshade Material combined with a French Drum Frame, we've created this modern lampshade with a unique construction from a DIY template, using some simple maths. Follow the step-by-step tutorial in the post to make your own version and reward your efforts with a contemporary pe

Trade show season is upon us and it’s great to be back meeting customers and sharing our inspiring lampshade making and craft kit products once again! Solely focussed on crafting and hobbies, our next show is CHSI Stitches, on Sunday 27th and Monday 28th February, at the Birmingham NEC. It’s a mecca of all thing making, covering a wide range of crafts from sewing to crochet and papercraft to lampshade making, of course! You'll find us there ready and waiting to answer your qu

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

Packed with wholesale homewares and gifts the Spring Fair trade show is a must for any craft or homeware retailer and we’ll be there, displaying our exciting lampshade and craft products, from the 6th- 9th February 2022 at the NEC Birmingham Hall 6 Stand E14. With our expert team on hand at our impressive stand, to answer your questions on ordering, selling and making any of our products we’re hoping you’ll find something unique to add to your retail offering, so come along

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

If you’ve not yet tried one of our Needcraft kits, 2022 might be the year to try one out! Featuring a range of useful home ware kits, from sewing bin kits to floor lamps, they’re brilliant for bringing a fabric you love into your home and are ideal for either a complete beginner or a seasoned crafter. We've plenty of creative ideas to share that will make our Needcraft kits shine and first up is our Needcraft Clock Making Kit, a quick and easy make, perfect for adding a touch

We often ask our lampshade makers ‘what’s your favourite part of making a lampshade?’ and more often than not it’s when the lampshade comes together and the seam is closed - the magic moment when you start to see a beautiful, bespoke shade. Closing the seam on your lampshade is important for creating a long-lasting and professional product and to help you choose the best finish for securing your seam, we’re highlighting four Dannells products for you to try. A little history

Spanning both fashion and interiors, Cottagecore started to gain traction in early 2019, evolving as an internet and social media trend, due to it’s popularity with the younger generations, particularly in the US. Cottage Core focuses on aspirations of rural lifestyles, romantic home styling, cosy country cottage vibes mixed with crafts and lifestyle hobbies, such as flower arranging, baking and gardening. A homely life is essentially at its core. A well adopted trend during

‘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

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

With the Easter holidays upon us it's time to get imaginative with some of our Needcraft Kits. As inspiring and easy to make for kids as they are for adults, we've put together five ideas for turning our kits into entertaining child-friendly activities with exciting end results. It's time to play and get creative! 1. Lantern Making Kit The nights are already lighter and we’ve a feeling that there might be a (small) Easter garden party or two on the horizon. Create a cosy and

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

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

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