unearthed an old lampshade frame whilst sorting the storage shelves on Wednesday and with a magical bit of timing Jude Hill posted about her bird cage lamp loom over on Spirit Cloth
So I decided to make a lampshade for the first time since 1980, remembering that empowering day in 1976 when my best friend Julie showed me how to make my first Tiffany lampshade, here’s a pic
it was a ridiculous choice of cloth, a heavy woven Chinese silk with vertical stripes on the reverse which of course shone through when lit, so each panel needed lots of tiny stitches to get the stripes to stay vertical and match at the edges.
Julie’s lampshades were all velvet, lace and silk tasseled perfection, mine ended up stitched in rough cheese cloths & hessian (aka burlap in the US) with feather and shell fringing & were a way to earn a living for a few years.
I like the light from the bare light bulb in my work space so I used very thin materials & one thing just led to another…
Bound the frame with lace edging then started covering it with some perfectly stretchy old stuff with holes in it, a transparent indigo dyed silk organza from Glennis Shibori Girl, some frothy FME embroidered lace from Karen Ruane, printmakers mull, whisper organza from Beautiful Silks, cheesecloth (aka scrim in the US & muslin in the UK), hemp string & passionfruit vine tendrils
early on Day 2 the cloth is half on
getting ’round and today it’s all finished in only three days!
looking up!
Comments
It's Crow Time 
What atmosphere! Clever you.
it was fun to have a play with the materials and the light
I’m reminded of some flats, back in the 60s…drippy candles in Barossa Pearl and Mateus Rose bottles, feathers on the blind pulls and an absolutely stunning “outback” painting on the very big holland blind, which we always had rolled up when the landlady called! 🙂
hmm I always loved those Mateus Rose bottles and it wasn’t a bad drop!
Thats fantastic and certainly a totally unique piece.
I’m surprised at how much it has softened the light even using such transparent materials & wish I had added the dangly passionfruit vine tendrils when it was still on the bench rather than from the stepladder!
looks fabulous. loved seeing it in progress. i’m so afraid of fire that i always hesitate to do things like this.
these new energy efficient light bulbs re much cooler than the old incandescent ones, have never had any of my lampshades catch fire and they have all had lots of dangly bits!
Love it!! I made a lampshade a few years ago… handmade paper and sticks. People comment that its sort of like what Radagast the Brown ( a wizard in the Hobbit) would have in his forest tree hut.
do you have a link to your paper and stick light? Rima Staines made a beautiful ivy and paper lamp back in 2010
Its somewhere on my blog… and its a bit like Rima’s, though she was smart and started with wire! I did it by gluing the paper around the sticks.. NOT fun.. ! I’ll make another one with wire. I’ll try to find that on my blog, too, and get back to you.
love your lamp shade Mo, so transparent …. !
thanks for the good words Els, I like it more today now that it’s up there and doing it’s job!
More Mo magic! Just beautiful!
thanks Carol it was amazing how my hands remembered the process as if it was yesterday, a bit like riding a bicycle!
Ahhh your’e a genius Mo! Looks fantastic. Oh the 60’s, I made a few lampshades too, and the Mateus Rose, haha and I thought I was being original back then. The more candle wax you could get on the bottle, the cooler (?????) you were. ox
and all the wax on the red & white checked table cloths…
Lovely. I see a jellyfish. : )
Hi Susan Old Man Crow saw a jellyfish too, the spirally tendrils clinched it
I just love it….far too gorgeous to be a jelly fish, more like one of Miss Havishams gowns that has degraded over time….
Hi Karen, thanks for having a look and the lovely link! , it’s a funny thing, I was thinking about the sea and sea urchin shells and “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D” a short story by JG Ballard but then it morphed into a jelly fish with the addition of those dangly passionfruit vine tendrils and now Miss Havisham’s gown!
it is so superb! and so different depending on whether illuminated or not. both versions very cool.
thanks for the good words Dee I wanted to do more embellishment like the bubbles in your global warming quilt but I ran out of steam with the next crow drawing in the works
moon shining through the sea!
we’re on a wavelength Cindy, I love your sea cloth with those words by Stephen Crane
“why in the name of seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed…”
I see the sea wherever I go lately…”I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,” (from John Masefield’s “Sea Fever”)
What a lovely assortment of images your lampshade has evoked! Having just been reading Grace, I thought of a planet…another world.
perhaps a planet that is only half real…
So creative–as usual, Mo. I really like that second to the last shot. Made me think of a Don Quixote windmill with the moon stuck in the center.
love how this one has evoked so many different images!