Ruffled Lamp Shade Tutorial

In March Dear Lilly posted a fabulous tutorial on how to make a ruffled lamp shade.  Isn’t hers so beautiful?!
I was so inspired I started on my own right away, then the Hawley house got a little busy and I never got to finish.  Well a couple weeks ago I was home with a sick puppy (who is fine now, thank goodness) and finally finished my lamp shade. 

This is the lamp on the corner of my desk before I transformed it.

Materials needed: lamp shade (I purchased an extra one in case I totally botched the project and wanted the original back), needle and thread, scissors, fabric, hot glue gun.

You always need a craft assistant…..here is mine.  Isn’t she the cutest?!  :-)

Remove any extra material on the lamp shade.

Cut out long pieces of fabric, as wide or as thin as you like.  Cut the stripes of fabric longer than you think because obviously it will get shorter when you make the ruffles.  If you cut the fabric too short and don’t realize it until you are gluing the ruffles onto the lamp shade, just add more fabric to the end of the ruffles.  No big deal, I did this with all three ruffles.

You could use a sewing machine with the ruffle setting for the next step, but if you don’t have one, like me, then you’re totally fine.  Make stitches, close together, down the middle of the fabric. 

Once you get to the end of the fabric, push it down so that it gathers into ruffles.  You can make your ruffles as tight or as loose as you like.

Before you tie off the thread, wrap the ruffle around the lamp to make sure that the ruffle will reach all the way around the lamp shade.  If it doesn’t, simply add more fabric until you do.  Then using your glue gun, make a few dots around the shade to secure the ruffles into place.  You don’t need a lot of glue here, so don’t go glue-crazy. 

Then repeat as many times as you need to cover your lamp shade.

Here is my new feminine ruffled lamp shade. 

What do you think? Easy enough, right?