This DIY lampshade has been pending for a while now. Hubby has had this beautiful brass lamp in his family for generations. It used to take pride of place in our living room and always looked beautiful.

But the lampshade has needed a change for a while now. Initially I postponed it thinking I’ll get a new one when we move.. choose something to go with the new place. When we did move, we wanted a change I guess, so the lamp was put away for a while. 

DIY Lampshade Made From Fabric Scraps:

Then the other day, while scrolling through DIY ideas on Pinterest, I saw a picture of a lampshade made from fabric scraps. I immediately remembered our long forgotten lamp. Out came all the leftover fabric I could find at home. I now have a funky new lampshade and here’s how I did it.

(1) Rip Out Existing Fabric:

As you can see, the fabric was in a pretty bad shape. I didn’t have to do much to pull it out. I pulled at a corner with my fingers and the whole lampshade literally fell apart.

(2) Clean the Frame:

First, I just dusted clean the frame. I was going to remove the fabric left over on the top and bottom rims, but I thought this way the frame is protected from rusting and so I left it as is. I only removed the little bits of thread sticking out of the rims.

(3) Cut Fabric in Strips:

I collected all the little bits of fabric I had. Most of them were old dupattas or blouse pieces from old sarees. I cut them into long strips, about 1.5 to 2 inches wide.

(4) Tie the Fabric Strips Across the Frame:

The idea in this DIY lampshade is to tie scraps of fabric from one vertical of the frame to the next and cover it all up to make the lampshade. This lampshade frame has only 4 vertical supports. Which means, when I tied a strip of cloth from one vertical to the next, the straight line went right across the curve of the lampshade, leaving a huge gap there.

I needed another vertical support in between the two metal ones, so that the strip of cloth goes along the curvature of the frame. The simplest way to add this support was by tying a thread… look at the pic below to see how.

I doubled up a long piece of thread and tied it from the top rim to the bottom rim, exactly between each of the two metal verticals. Now I had 8 verticals on the frame instead of 4.

Now each strip of cloth was tied first to a metal vertical, then a knot on the central thread, and ended on the next metal vertical.

(5) Keep Adding Layers of Fabric Strips:

I kept tying strips of cloth from one vertical to the next, and building the lampshade a layer at a time.

… till the whole frame was full of fabric strips.

(6) Trim the Knots:

The huge knots looked quite ugly on the vertical, so I took a scissor and trimmed the extra fabric off as close to the knot as possible, but not so close that the knot will slip off and open.

(7) Paint the Rim:

The lampshade looked pretty neat now. But I thought the white top and bottom rim were looking quite ugly and standing out against all those colourful scraps of fabric. The closest fabric paint colour I had to this lot of fabrics was an orange, so I used it to paint the rims.

I had to be a little careful of not getting the paint on to the fabric strips. If I had thought of this earlier, I would have first painted the rim, let it dry and then start tying the fabric strips.

Once that was done, my DIY lampshade from fabric scraps was ready!

(8) The DIY Lampshade from Fabric Scraps is Ready!

Though the lamp looked beautiful in the living room too..

… I thought the best place for it would be in our little balcony garden.

It fits in perfectly with the colourful, boho look, doesn’t it?

This was a completely impromptu DIY, where I didn’t even plan the colours of the fabric. I had to make do with whatever left over scraps I had. It can easily be planned better so you can pick fabrics to go with a particular colour scheme.

But even if you don’t.. the mix and match boho feel is great and you will definitely have yourself a funky, colourful lampshade at the end.

So do try it out, and let me know what you think.

Here’s a short video for those of you who enjoy that…

Until next time,