Choosing the Right Fabric for Your Lampshade
March 04, 2014
1 Comment
So you're ready to make your own lampshade. You've measured your lamp base to determine your ideal lampshade size, and you've picked out your custom DIY Lampshade Making Supplies accordingly. Now, what about the fabric? The general rule is to choose natural fiber based fabrics - cotton, silk, linen, etc. But you might want a bit more direction than that. As someone who's made dozens of lampshades and experimented with different types of fabrics and fibers, I can tell you that some fabrics are much easier to work with than others. So here I've ranked the types of fabric from easiest to most difficult to use for DIY lampshades.
-
Light weight cotton. Easy to apply to the styrene and easy to tuck under the rings. Perfect for beginners.
-
Medium weight cotton. Can be more difficult to tuck under the rings. Will also create an opaquer shade.
-
Linen. The more lightweight it is, the easier it will be. Be careful of wrinkles!
-
Silk. The hard part is applying to the styrene without wrinkling it. After that, it's easy enough to work with.
-
Burlap. Oh, the pain! You'll need many clips and even more patience for this.
Types of fabric not to use:
-
Anything synthetic. Okay, cotton with a bit of stretch does work, and a linen/poly blend would probably turn out well. The general rule is to keep it as natural as possible. Why? The adhesive backing on the styrene sheet just doesn't stick to synthetic fibers.
Other things to consider:
-
Opacity/ translucency. How much light do you need to need to come through your shade? Fabrics with a lighter weight and/or color will allow your lamp to throw more light. A darker hue or heavy fabric will only allow light to come through the top & bottom of the shade.
-
Quantity. To determine the quantity of fabric you need to cover a drum lampshade, get out your calculator! Multiply the diameter of the shade by pi (3.14). Add 2" to that. This will be the minimum length of fabric you require. For the height, take the height of your lampshade and add 2".
-
Print or solid. Consider the style of your lamp base and your existing home decor. Accent lamps with solid bases look great with a bold print. If your room already has a lot going on and you just need something to tie it together, consider a solid fabric for the shade.
1 Response
Leave a comment
Anne Kemper
January 28, 2024
My husband and I lost 1.1m worth of Bitcoins to a fake cryptocurrency investment platform. A few months back, we saw an opportunity to invest in cryptocurrency to make huge profits from our investments. We contacted a broker online who was pretending to be an account manager for a forex trading firm, we invested a huge part of our retirement savings and business money into this platform not realizing it was all a sc^m to steal away our money. After weeks of trying to withdraw, this broker continued to request more money until we were broke and in debt, it felt as if we were losing our life. Fortunately for us, we saw an article about a recovery hacker called HACKER RODNEY CRYPTO TRACES AND RECOVERY , we were not in a hurry to contact them but we did some research about their services and found out they could help us recover our money from these scammers, we contacted Refund Policy and in a space of 72 hours, they were able to recover everything, this company did a thorough investigation with the information we provided them and ensured that every penny was returned to us, it felt so unreal how they were able to recover everything we have lost. We are truly grateful for the help of HACKER RODNEY CRYPTO TRACES AND RECOVERY home and we are putting this out there to everyone who needs their services.
Email: (hackerrodney0@ gmail.com)
Whatsapp: +44 (7446) 46-3457