Monday 22 April 2013

Science Festival Materialise Lampshade


Living in Edinburgh definitely has its advantages. There is always something happening. Just now we are coming to the end of the Science Festival and as part of it the Mini Makers Faire held a day of inventions, electronics and crafts. So a couple of weeks ago I spent an evening perusing the list of activitiess that they were running and decided on the make your own lampshade class. After all, we all need lampshades, I figured it could be a useful thing to know in the future.


Sitting at my bench when I arrived was a perfectly sized sheet of sticky back PVC and appropriately sized fabric, double sided fabric tape, lampshade frame and scissors. All of this was provided by the lovely people at Materialise. I believe they are planning to start a lampshade making class at their shop and were using this event as a test group. 

The next step was to pick out a few matching trims. I'm not normally a frilly sort of person but seeing as everyone else was happily snapping up the fringe, bobbles and other wacky trims, I decided to embrace the lace and quickly picked up a pink velvety ribbon and a mother of pearl buckle too.



The shade was incredibly simple to put together. We were supplied with some very easy step by step instruction and within about 40mins I had everything assembled. 

  • Simply put, the PVC is stuck to the fabric leaving about 1.5cm of fabric along the edges so it can be folded round the metal frame.
  • I then covered both the top and bottom frames in a row of double sided tape and rolled the frame along the 1.5cm strip of fabric until the two ends met.
  • Another row of tape held the two short edges of fabric together.
  • We were also supplied with a toothed triangular shaped tool which we used to tuck the raw edged of fabric under the metal frame so they were hidden.
  • At this point you have a finished and functional lampshade however we decided to accessorise our with the trims that we had selected at the start. 
And here is the finished article in action. Pretty good for a £10 class I think. By happy chance it also goes quite nicely with the rest of the furnishings in my room. The only problem is now I need to make another one for the other bedside table!

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