Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Old Sweater Project: Lampshade Cover

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Upcycle old sweaters
 Hey hey! Can I just say it's fun posting about 'warming' up my house for fall/winter when its still 85 degrees outside. lol. I must live in lala land. I swear, one of these days, the weather is actually going to feel like fall weather and not like summer. At least the nights and mornings are getting crisp :) ...which by the way, makes it really hard to dress for. You dress warm in the morning cuz its cold out, and then by the afternoon you're dying from the heat. Just sayin......

Anyway. Today is another simple project dealing with.....yep, you guessed it....sweaters :) This time, updating a lampshade using a sweater. If you are lucky, and have the right sized sweater for your shade, this will take no time at all.
Upcycle Sweaters Lamp

 Okay. All you have to do is get a sweater and fit it on your lampshade. I had the bottom of the sweater hit the bottom rim of the shade, made it easy and kept a nice finished edge. For this, I used a sweater that was a perfect fit for the shade itself. If you are using a bigger sweater, you may want to take it in on the sides a bit to get the fit you want.
Now, find the top rim of the lampshade under the sweater and mark about two inches above it and start cutting....while you are cutting, make sure the bottom of the sweater is staying in line with the bottom of the shade :) unlike mine in the picture below lol. But, lucky me, I noticed this before I finished cutting ;)
And side note....27 weeks! only 13 left :)...and yes, this is my nursery with no crib, dresser, rug, chair, etc....nothing in it yet lol

Once you have cut the sweater around the shade, fold over the excess sweater fabric into the inside of the shade and secure using hot glue. When working around wires, you can just cut a little slit in the fabric so the wire peeps through. Or you can just go right over it, depends on the finish you want :) Once you are a here, if you are OCD and need a finished edge, you can now glue some ribbon around the unfinished edge of the sweater. I didn't. But you can ;)

The best thing about this project is that you aren't ruining your current lampshade. Since the sweater fits right over an existing shade, there's no need to spray or glue the outside of the shade. This is a great way...and cheap way...to transition the lamp from summer to fall/winter.
Sweater lamp shade
Once winter is over, just take the sweater off. You'll probably have a few glue marks on the inside of the shade, but as long as it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me ;)

If you missed yesterday's post, just click below and see how to make a vase cozy. Takes like 1 minute to make :) Seriously.