Using My Flat Iron To Recover My Shades

This wasn't a project that I had planned for the dining room make-over but it was a fun project.  After  putting up the curtain panels and recovering the seats of the chairs I still felt that the room didn't match the picture in my mind.  It still needed a bit more fabric.  And I still had plenty of my $2 a yard fabric.

Here is the room before the make-over started.  Yuck!

I am not thrilled with the metal color of the chandelier but I have a feeling my hubby is not going to be happy if I ask him to take it down so I can repaint it.  My husband frequently does not see my vision for a finished project, so I may touch it up with a little RubNBuff.  But for now I'm going to recover these lack luster shades. 

I started by carefully removing the trim from the shades. 

I left the rest of the shade as is.

The only thing I bought for this project was the bias tape maker and Fabri- Tac.  I loved the

Fabri-Tac.  It really worked well for this project and I am sure I will be using it again.

I made a pattern on a scrap of fabric and cut six pieces for each shade.

A cloths pin worked perfectly for holding the fabric on while it ran the glue along the seams in the shade. It fit perfectly on the wire that the frame is made of.

After putting the glue on the frame I smoothed the fabric with another cloths pin.

This took about an hour and a half but it was easy and kind of relaxing.

Next up was making all the trim.  Can you believe that each shade had 5 feet of trim on it?  I had to make 30 feet of bias tape so it is a good thing that I bought the bias tape maker.  It was probably the best $8 I have spent in quite awhile.

I used my rotary cutter and clear ruler to cut about a zillion strips of fabric. 

Here is where my flat iron came in.  The directions on the tape maker said to iron the tape as you pull the tape maker but I could not seem to coordinate that so I decided to use my straightening iron.

It worked perfectly.  Much easier than the iron and it went really fast.

Here is all tape ready to glue on to the shades.

I don't have any pictures of the next few steps because Gidget got a hold of the SD card from my camera and chewed it up.

I started by folding the ends over, gluing them and using the cloths pin to hold

 it until it dried.

Then I ran a bead of glue around the top or bottom of the shade and pressed the tape into place.  I trimmed the end and tucked it under the finished end and held it with the cloths pin.

I also covered my chandelier chain using the same fabric I used on my chair cushions.

Here is the chandelier wearing her newly recovered shades.  And the only thing that I had to buy was the glue that holds it all together. 

Thanks for reading,

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