Anthro Knock-off Lamp Shade: The Tutorial

I received many compliments on the Anthropologie knock off lamp shade that I submitted into the So You Think You Can Sew competition.  Thank you all for supporting and encouraging me through the competition!  Several people asked for a tutorial so here it is. 

Please bare with me as this is my first sewing tutorial and I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked.



I started out by shopping at Good will for my materials.  I found a brown bed skirt and a beat up lamp shade all for under $8.  Just look at this ugly thing. It was desperate for a makeover.

To cut your material, you can either wrap it around the lamp shade and roughly cut it with a few extra inches on the top and bottom.  - OR -  you can lay your material flat, and roll you lampshade along while tracing the top and bottom edges. Then cut an inch or so outside of those lines.

I draped mine around the shade and just chopped away. I wasn't very meticulous about this step, just go for it.   Note that if your shade is more cone shaped, you will cut more of a curved shape out of the fabric. If it's a drum shade, it will be straight across.  Mine was just barely cone shaped. 

Put you shade and background fabric aside. Now, it's time to cut out some leaves.  Take a piece of scratch paper and roughly draw out a leave shape and cut it out.  This will be your template so that you're leaves are all about the same size.  Don't worry about it being prefect or cutting all of them exactly according to the template. You just don't want a tiny leaf and a huge leaf making a lopsided flower.

Start cutting away.  I cut probably 40 or so leaves. It will depend on how big your lampshade is and what size leaves you're cutting out.  Also, I wanted to double layer each one to give it more of a textured and full look. It's up to you and the material you're using.

Next, you want to start placing the leaves on your background fabric.  Again, I layered 2 leaves on top of each other.  Start in the middle of your background fabric and  make one full flower, then from there, space them however you like and continue making more flowers.  You may only have a half or a third of a flower along an edge and that's ok. Just fill put your background fabric. 


Look carefully at these pictures. You see how the leaves aren't just overlapping? You want to make them bunch up in the middle and on the sides where they touch. So put them close together and for all the parts that touch, make them into "peaks" instead of just overlapping. 

I sure hope this is making sense :/

Now that you have everything in place, go crazy with your pins.

Then, sew everything into place.  I don't have any picture of this step but there's nothing special to it.  I didn't finish off any of the edges because I wanted the frayed and unfinished look.  Start at the base and sew an inch or two inside of the leaf and slightly curved to match the shape. When you get close to the tip, stop with your needle down, lift the presser foot, and turn your fabric around. Sew the opposite direction, curving to make the shape, and meet back up with your starting stitches at the base.   If you need a visual, go look at the finished product and it will hopefully make more sense.

Now that everything is sewn, you're ready to recover the old lampshade.  There's tons of tutorials on how to do this, so if mine isn't clear, I guarantee there's more help out there.

Wrap your fabric around to make sure everything will fit right. You can use clothespins to hold it in place while you check everything out.  You can have your hot glue gun heating up at this point.

To tack it down to the shade, it will be like making a hem. Start with one of the top corners, fold down once, then fold down a second time to hide the unfinished edge.  Then place some hot glue on the rim of your shade and push the fabric down over it.  Put a clothespin over it to hold it in place while it dries. Be as liberal as you'd like with the hot glue. :)

Repeat this step over and over around the top rim of the lamp shade. Stretch the fabric for a nice tight fit as you go.  Leave the shade to dry for a few minutes.  Once dry, remove the clothespins, flip it over and repeat the steps along the bottom rim.

Trim off any excess and glue down the vertical edges.   What I love about this lampshade is that the textured and layered effects allow you to cover up little mistakes.  There's no wrong way to do this project. Just go for it, have fun, add you're own touch to it, and keep $90 in your wallet!

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on how to make things more clear!