Little Project for my Little Girls

The twins have these cute sconces above their beds, due to Glenn’s creativity and foresight while he was building their bed nooks.  I had put these little shades over the bulbs – because they were free and I liked the look of shades better than the bare bulbs.

Here they are turned off:

         

And now on:

           

Aren’t they sweet?  But I kept thinking they needed just a little something more – I thought about spray painting them (I’m serious), or making lamp shade covers, etc.  But yesterday I had an idea!

I have lots of linens: tablecloths, napkins, table runners, etc.  They are one of my weaknesses.  I always look for them at GW or the antique stores.  And I guess they are a pretty handy weakness to have – I use them every day!  Anyway, I had been given an old, white damask in a lovely heavy linen weight.  Unfortunately it has so many stains on it, it just can’t be used as a tablecloth by itself.  But that doesn’t mean it can be used!  I never get rid of linens – even the stained ones – if they are old and beautiful.  This one has a beautiful stitch along the hemlines.  I decided to cut lengths from the hems to use as trim around the sconce shades.

Here is a close-up, although it’s dark, of the edge.  See the pretty damask pattern above the tiny dots?

After measuring the perimeter around the bottom edge of the shade with my tape measure, which was 14 inches, I laid the tablecloth on the floor, straightened the hemline alongside my yardstick and cut 4 lengths – each 30 inches long.  I cut very close to the edge of the little holes so that they would hang on the bottom once they were attached.

 

After cutting the lengths, I thought they were a little wider than I wanted for such a small shade.  So I just folded down the top edge lengthwise.  I love pleats – so I pleated the trim as I stitched it by simply folding little sections over just before they went under the needle.  To make the two ends come together smoothly, I stitched them to each other before I pleated.  This makes a continuous circle of the trim.  After it was pleated, the seam seemed to disappear.

Here’s my first little guy!

    

They were a good enough fit that I kind of slipped them over the shade at first, but then I went ahead and hot glued them just to make sure they stay in place.

And here they are in place!

Turned off:

      

And, of course, see them when the lights are on:

                  

I tried to get a picture of how they look in the nooks from farther away, but that didn’t really turn out as well as I hoped.  Oh well – here’s a look anyway. 

The girls were tickled with them.  Any little girly thing I do in their room pleases them.  They are so sweet!