Pleated Lampshade: How to

For the guest room, I knew I needed a pair of wall sconce lamps because the room is too narrow for a pair of bedside tables. Everything I looked at was over $100 a piece, and I just didn't have it in the budget. So I found these simple Ikea sconces for $14.99 a piece,



and turned them into something custom.

Here's the step by step tutorial.

First, let me say that I had never really noticed all the different ways that lampshades get pleat treatments until I was planning to make these over. I was originally thinking of something sort of gathered, not unlike the original Ikea shades, but the fabric I wanted to use (leftover from the headboard) is upholstery weight linen, and it would have gotten really bulky. Then I saw this:

[Elle Decor; Design: Sig Bergamin; Photo: Simon Upton]

I know, this room is GORGEOUS and there is so much going on and it's kind of crazy to zero in on the pleated lampshade.



But I loved the structure of the box pleat, and the way the spacing allows you to see some flat fabric, too, so I had a plan.

Here's what I started with.


First, remove the binding and the fabric.


Blank slate. Don't worry about getting all those little gummy edges off, they actually help when you add the new fabric later.


Cut your fabric in a rectangle that is the same height as your shade and long enough to wrap the shade times 2. There's no need to cut the fabric on a curve, the way you do when attaching new fabric flat to the shade--the pleats will make the curves work for you. (As a side note, if you want the pleats to lie down very flat, as in in the inspiration picture, working on the curve would probably help.)

To make the pleats, I played around with the fabric to see what felt like a good width with the small repeat, and cut a piece of cardboard to make a guide--in my case, 1" wide. Then I folded a box pleat around the cardboard. I lined the edge of the cardboard up along the center of the pattern to keep my lines straight.


Press in the pleat over the cardboard.


Remove the cardboard and press again.


Repeat. I left about one horizontal repeat between each pleat. With a patternless fabric, you might want to measure. I also re-pressed all the pleats with each new pleat.


Keep pleating until you have enough pleated fabric to go around the TOP of your shade.


Pin both sides of each pleat at the TOP.


Stitch down your pleats, ONLY at the top of the shade.




Starting at the lampshade's seam, glue down the stitched edge of your fabric, lining it up to the edge of the shade. I used a hot glue gun, working in about 2-inch sections.

To finish the edge, I chose double fold bias tape to completely cover the rough edge of the fabric and the shade. Using hot glue again, I glued all around the outside first, then glued the bias tape into the inside. On the first shade, I glued it in sections all the way around, inside and outside, as you actually see here, but that didn't work quite as well. When you get to the seam a the back, fold your bias tape under and glue down.


Use clips to secure while the glue cures. I had these clips left over from some drapery rings that I used with hooks in pinch pleats, and they worked great.


Apparently at this point I stopped taking pictures and decided I was home free.

Next, you want to line up the fabric seam along the back of the shade. I did not fold under my raw edge, but instead masked it with a pleat. Use hot glue to secure the seam.

Repeat the bias tape application on the bottom of the shade. The pleats open up at the bottom to allow for the larger circumference, so the folds will not be perfect. At first I stressed about this and tried a whole different method to keep the pleats really smooth and even, but in the end I think the whole idea is to let them be a bit looser at the bottom. I just added the bias tape and let them fall where they may.

I will admit, the backs of these shades could be a little more perfect, but since they're sconces you don't really see that side. Next time I would measure to make sure the pleats came out evenly and matched up correctly at the back. But that seems like a lot of math, to be honest.

Anyway, hope that all makes sense! I love that I got this total custom look with $14.99 Ikea wall sconces, scrap fabric, and a couple of dollars worth of bias tape. Plus, once I figured out how to do it, I think it only took an hour or two. So I say: go for it!

Let's talk about headboards

There was this interview question that became notorious at my organization when I worked in public art, and it went kind of like this: Ho do you make a sandwich?

There was no wrong answer, but people invariably froze up when it was asked because it felt like a trick. What your answer supposedly revealed about you was how detail oriented you are, but I also think it's a good test of how good you are at giving instructions. (As a side note, it was often revealing about personality. My favorite ever answer came from a young woman just out of college who said that first things first, she would ask if anyone else would like a sandwich, and I will tell you, I'm not sure I've met a sweeter or more generous person.)

What does this have to do with anything? Well, here's the thing. I'm no expert DIYer, but I'm pretty resourceful and, generally speaking, if I want it done, I will get it done. And now there are a TON of resources out there--tutorials, videos, pictorial step-by-step guides. But so often, as I watch/read them, I find that they skip over the part that I don't know how to do, as if getting that part done is just magic. I was just looking at a tutorial for pleated lampshades today (yes, I know), and there were TONS of detail about the stuff that seems no-brainer to me, like how to remove the old lampshade from the frame, but when it gets to the construction of the new one, you just get the directive "now start to pleat." But, I found myself thinking, I'm reading this TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE A BOX PLEAT on a lampshade. I'm sure I could just figure it out, but I was hoping to skip a step by seeking out advice.

So. Headboards. There are videos out there. They show you all about cutting the plywood and the foam and wrapping them in batting and stapling on the fabric. Fine and good. But when I went to make the girls' headboards, I realized there was a little glitch: I didn't know how to deal with the curve in the corners and get a nice smooth finish.

Especially since I was using 3 inch foam, which I know now is absolutely only for professionals. If you don't have the right equipment, only use 2 inch foam. There, I said it, tip number one.

Since I was using a thick, faux-suede fabric, it got all bunched up in the corners, and it wouldn't lie close to the edge in the middle of the curve. I thought it might just be a matter of pulling it really, really taut. For a while, I thought I just needed extra strength, or an extra pair of hands, and tried to coax the hubs into helping in his scant free time. No dice. I moved on to other projects, and while I was researching the cornice, I came across this diagram.

[Sunset Curtains, Draperies, and Shades]

And the key phrase, "fabric clipped at curve." So there you go, I'm filling in a missing piece of headboard how-to's: when navigating a curve, snip the fabric is long strips perpendicular to the edge, and fan it out. Staple at the top of each strip. If you're nervous, snip incrementally until you get close enough to the edge for your smooth finish.


Figuring that out was by far the hardest part of that project, and there you have it. (To be honest, I still haven't figured out how to get the fabric to wrap around the bottom of the headboard and the side of the leg. In the girls room, I just upholstered the outside edges as if the headboard was one big piece, even though it has legs cut into it.)


(Posting those pictures kind of feels like airing dirty little secrets.)

As for the guestroom headboard, it was really a simple matter of stapling new fabric over the old. The hardest part was matching the pattern for the side seams (my fabric wasn't quite wide enough to cover the width of a queen headboard), and keeping my 4-year-old off the thing while I was working.



I recently read an article with Julie Taymore talking about her new Spider Man musical, where she spoke at length about the beauty of the sets and her insistence on finishing them on all sides, even the vantage point that would never be seen by any audience. I have to say, this headboard was finished professionally, front and back, and looking at the nice trim covering the seam along the back edge I felt a little guilty coming in with my rogue staple gun, but my budget was already busted without buying yardage that would never be seen by anyone.


I cut the welting off the edges as recommended by Jenny, here, then simply laid out my seamed fabric and stapled around the edges, pulling taught as I went and flipping the thing over once in a while to make sure the pattern remained straight.

I used the trick from the diagram above when things got hairy around the curve. I even had enough fabric left to cover the wooden legs, including strips matched up and stapled in along the back edge.
I felt sort of like a poor man's Julie Taymor as I made sure that these little bits and pieces were taken care of, and a good thing, too: they totally show in the room.

After all the drama over the fabric, the actual re-covering was a cinch. Ta-da!


So there you have it. Now that the headboard is installed in its room, I kinda sort want to paint the walls indigo.....And with one thing inevitably leading to another, I finally understand why Domino was called "domino".

Progress

Okay, I didn't mean for that to be such a tease. When I posted the "before" pictures, I thought the "after" was imminent. I was wrong. A couple of projects had all kinds of setbacks, but progress is being made, and there's only one major thing left for me to do in there before I can reveal the room, which is looking quite adorable if I do say so myself.

Here's a sneak peek of some of the things I've been working on.

I just made these bolsters for the beds.


I love moire fabric--reminds me of my grandmother and covered the tables at our wedding--and there's just something about a chartreuse moire bolster that makes me weak in the knees. This is a pretty simple project--you basically sew a tube and then put a casing on either end--but I decided to find directions online instead of trying to do the math myself. I liked the way they explained it over at Canadian Living, but I misunderstood the folding directions for the casings and ended up with these long poochy ends.

Solution: a little pleat at the end of the bolster, which gives a more finished, tailored look anyway and highlights the puckered ends.


To make the pleat ,I just measured the radius of the circle at the bolster end, then measured in the same distance on each of the ends of the fabric tube, folded it under, and used about a 1/4 inch seam allowance to stitch all the way around. I didn't even have to pin it, which was awesome.

I also had a remnant of a super cute plaid that I found in my fabric box that I bought about 10 years ago for who knows what project that never got finished. (Or started.) The colors pick up on the scheme in the curtain fabric, and I like that it feels young and sort of preppy. I considered it for the bolsters (the only thing cuter than a moire bolster is a plaid one), but I wanted a larger dose of it in the room, so I decided to make little throws for the ends of the beds. Since I only had 1 1/2 yards, I ended up making what is apparently called a "bed scarf": a throw that drapes over the ends of the bed and comes up about 1/4 to a 1/3 of the way. The woman in the fabric store told me hotels started making them a few years back to save on fabric.


I bought some ivory fleece for backing (on sale for $3.99 a yard!) and picked up some Wright's blanket edging to finish it off. I followed the directions here on the wright's website (though they don't tell you how to do the final corner, so I just made it up). My corners aren't exactly perfect, but I'm mostly happy with the result--sort of baby blanket like.

It occurred to me as I made the second one that I could have just sewed the plaid and the fleece together inside out and ended up with a finished throw without a binding which may have been a little more sophisticated. If I was doing it over again, I would probably consider piping the edges instead of a blanket binding--I'm not sure I love that satin. But hey, the girls are only 2 and 4, and I'm guessing these will be used largely as blankets for their dolls.

Lastly, I FINALLY tracked down this chair on craiglist, which I was originally supposed to go see just before Thanksgiving.


I know, what am I thinking, right? A rattan swing chair plus plaid blankets plus chartreuse moire? The curtains pull it all together, I promise. I'm sort of tempted to paint the chair since it's not in the greatest shape, but I think I'll make a new cushion in cute fabric and get it up in the room before I decide.

The rug arrives tonight, I think I can build the cornice tomorrow, and then.... voila.

It has been so much fun pulling all of this together, though I'm not sure I've ever done quite so much sewing in my life!

Buying Vintage

When we moved in to this house, I had visions for most of the rooms, and had a mental list of where we would need to invest in some new pieces and where we could use what we had.

I was wrong about almost all of it.

Take the dining room. Our dining room contains some of my absolute favorite pieces: a beautiful Chinese armoire, handed down from my parents, a beautiful solid cherry wood farm table, made by hand by my father-in-law, and a set of four Phillipe Starck Ghost Chairs, the only big furniture purchase Dave and I made together in the Brooklyn 30th street house, a splurge we saved for for a long time. Plus we had a decent neutral rug and plenty of art and accessories to choose from. I thought we were set. But I got it all in and realized something: the scale was all wrong. The table was too small. The rug was way too small. And now that we live where we know a lot more people, the number of chairs was too, too small.

Tackling the seating problem, I just couldn't make the room add up. I considered an upholstered banquette, a pair of wing chairs to anchor the table, a pair of upholstered chairs AND a long lacquered bench. But most of those scenarios still yielded 6-8 seats, and some STILL required the purchase of an additional Ghost Chair (or two). Did I mention the price has gone up on those things TWICE since we bought them?

Then, trolling craiglist for a dresser for the guest room, opportunity knocked. Someone in Wisconsin was selling a set of 8 original Herman Miller fiberglass shell chairs. They were teal. I got excited, then forgot about them. I really wanted to incorporate my Ghost chairs into the scheme, right? Later that night, looking for something online, I noticed the tab still open, and showed it to Dave.

"Okay, don't tell me I'm crazy, but what do you think about these?" I asked. "For the dining room."

"Hm. I like them," He said. (You have no idea: normally I research for days, sit him down and show him a bunch of tabs, and he rejects everything.)

The next day we drove to Stillwater and just over the bridge to Wisconsin where we met Ron, a 3-decades employee of 3M who bought a palette of these chairs when the company was selling them off. They've been in the garage for years, but now he's selling his mother's house. So.

Normally, I think it's great to see a thing in your house before you have to commit to it. Color can be deceiving, and scale, especially if you're looking at a piece of furniture in a vast warehouse or flea market or a small dark garage where your point of reference is way off from your reality at home. Generally, with vintage, you have to decide on the spot.

We bought the chairs, but on our way home with the first half of them in the car, Dave wondered aloud: "Did we just repeat the yellow chairs?" The yellow chairs being a set of four mid-century leather and chrome chairs that we bought when we first moved in together. Dave was obsessed with them, I was fine with them, they were all piled onto a table in a cramped antique shop on Atlantic Avenue and after we bought them we discovered that the legs were a bit warped, the seats a bit scratched, and Dave was pissed off every time he sat in one of them. We had them just under a year and then sold them at a loss when we moved to the house on 30th street.

As it is turning out, I'm loving the Eames chairs in the dining room, and any fears that we overpaid are quelled by a quick search of ebay, where the chairs start high and then skyrocket, and where sets of 8 are exceedingly rare. There are some scratches that we'll have to learn not to see, and we'll spend a little money replacing some of the feet, but I think we still got a good deal, and the seller got a fair price. This is one of the goals in buying vintage.

It could have worked out differently, though. The teal could have been hideous in context, the feet exorbitantly expensive, the scale all wrong for the room, etc. Then we would have had an expensive mistake on our hands, and we would have been on ebay trying to sell them off again. So I thought I would share some tips on buying vintage. Consider these the Lessons I Refuse to Learn.

1. Do your research. While it can feel like there is the pressure of losing out on a purchase if you wait, you usually have time to do a little research. In our case, before heading out to see the chairs we should have checked out the going rate on ebay (although I had a sense of it from looking for one of these chairs in Boulder), as well as looked into the price of replacement parts so I would know what I was dealing with. If we had know that replacement feet cost $25/set of 4, we could have negotiated a better price on the chairs. The more you know, the more you will feel confident in your offer, and the less regrets you'll have later, whether you ultimately get the piece or not.

2. With small items (small price tag and physically small), buy what you love. You'll find a place for it.

3. Take a picture. This serves two purposes: it allows you to see the piece from a different perspective, and it allows you to sit on it and "bring it home" if you can't physically bring it home.

4. Ask to take it home. You likely can't do this with anything particularly large, but it's worth asking. I recently brought home two 1960s painted portraits on 24-hour approval. It took the pressure off the purchase and allowed me to decide if I really loved them or if I just felt I had to because now they were mine. (I kept them)

5. Even in an antique store, ask if the price is firm. There's often room to negotiate, but be reasonable. You want everyone to walk away happy.

6. Don't carry a lot of cash. If you love a piece, you can ask the seller to hold it while you get money. This cuts down on impulse purchases and allows you to walk away and consider.

7. Inspect the piece carefully before handing over the money. I've made this mistake more than once, either because I didn't want to hurt the seller's feelings or because I got nervous in the negotiation or because the piece was against a wall/on a table/in the dark. Take your time!

- Check the BACKS of things (I once bought a dresser that turned out to be water stained on the back)
- Check the legs, which can be chipped or broken (I recently bought a small side table that turned out to have a chunk of wood missing on one leg)
- Check the UNDERSIDES for rust or water damage (okay, this one has never happened to me, but it sure could)
- Sit in chairs, and put them on the flattest surface you can find to make sure they are level (a la the yellow chairs)

If a dealer isn't willing to let you pull out, sit in, or turn upside down a piece of furniture, walk away.

7. Make an offer, then don't nickel and dime. Once, in a Paris flea market, I forgot the conversion rate (approximately five francs to one dollar at the time), haggled mercilessly, then walked away. In retrospect, it turned out I was fighting over a dollar. This is a waste of everyone's time and energy.

8. Stick to your guns. If you have a bottom dollar, hold steady. The seller may be willing to meet you, or you may walk away, but you'll know you did the right thing.

You can see the new chairs in the background of this photo (with the added bonus of adorable Eleri). They made me reconsider certain things about the room, in a good way. I'm working on curtains and wallpaper and the chandelier, and will post the big reveal when it's all done.

How to Hang an Art Wall

My first job out of college, I worked for a downtown boutique advertising agency, assisting, and then becoming, the Art Buyer, the person who works with the creative teams and finds the right photographer or illustrator to realize their vision for a print campaign. Photographers like to work editorial assignments for the artistic freedom and the recognition, but they like to do commercial shoots for the big budgets and better fees, so Art Buyers tend to become friends with photo agents and known to agencies. This is all a lot of background to say that when I was about 23, I got a call from Magnum, an elite agency representing the world's best photo journalists, asking to meet with me about hanging a show of Burt Glinn's work at the ad agency. The agent and the photographer came in with a collection of prints from his work in Cuba in the 1960s, and as we worked out a plan to arrange the work, I began to see clearly how a wall of art prints could tell a story, and the way the narrative changed as we created different juxtapositions.

On the day they came to install, I learned a thing or two about the practical aspects of hanging a group of works, the actual nails and measuring, and I have now put the tips into practice in three houses and several arrangements, like this one in the dining room in Boulder.



When we moved into our new house, I had an immediate vision for a wall of art in the office, a more private room tucked away at the back of the house, where there was one large, blank wall. Because the scale of the wall was much larger than the ones I had worked with before, I knew it would take some careful planning. Now, there are entire books on the subject of hanging art displays, but I believe it is largely instinctive, a matter of personal preference in terms of both the aesthetics and, more importantly, what story you want to tell. Apart from feeling it out, there are a few steps that work for me. (You can do this in just a couple of hours, and it's really fun).

1. Choose your work

Most people don't have endless works of art to choose from. When making a grouping, you may just want to use everything you have--you chose each of the pieces, you can probably make them work together. If you do have more to choose from, look for commonalities that tie a group together, whether a color scheme or a subject theme. If there's no theme within the works, you probably want to limit yourself to one medium, say photographs, oil paintings, or works on paper. If all your pieces relate to the ocean (to choose a subject at random), you can much more easily mix a watercolor and a photograph. Keep in mind that the frames are a visual element, too. Some people will suggest framing everything uniformly, but I say, not necessary. You can use uniform frames as a way to make a statement- I once saw a long hallway filled with black and white photographs all framed in red, which packed a totally chic punch- but the general rule of thumb is to choose a frame that is right for the piece, not for a grouping or your room.

2. Plan your composition

This is the fun part. Take all the pieces your thinking of using, and lay them out on the floor. Move them around until it feels like they fit. I usually start with the largest piece, which I like to put somewhere near the middle for weight, and then let the smaller pieces radiate out from there.






I also think about balance in terms of light and dark, both in the piece and in the frame material, and the density of the image versus the amount of negative space. With a very large wall or a lot of pieces, it's also a good idea to think about creating pockets of order within the larger composition- incorporating pairs or using symmetry in placement, as I ultimately did here in the office.


With fewer pieces, you can create a sense of energy by playing against symmetry. Our final grouping in our Brooklyn dining room had three pieces hung "too high"- not everyone's cup of tea, but in the end I found it more interesting than if it was completely balanced. (And, i will admit, a happy accident-I used existing nails from a previous grouping for one or tow of the pieces on the right, and then just went with it.)



3. Mock it up

Once you have your arrangement set, take a picture: you'll need it for reference later. (It's also helpful to do this while planning your composition- you see things in the photograph that you may not see looking directly at the arrangement.) Now trace each piece on butcher paper, cut them out, and label them. With smaller walls I have generally skipped this step, though the results vary. In our Boulder dining room, one half of the arrangement ended up all scrunched up while the other half had more breathing room between pieces. Oops! I had to swap in a bigger piece on the left to make it feel more balanced.





When you have all your paper cut, refer to your photo and begin adhering the paper to the wall, using some of that sticky tack that won't leave a mark on the wall. It's a good idea to measure the overall dimensions of the arrangement in order to place the first piece on the wall, but eyeballing it should get you pretty close, too (I'm definitely an eyeballer). This is also a good chance to make any adjustments based on what you see in your photos from the floor layout. In our office, I realized that the little square piece at the top of the grouping was too disconnected from the piece around it when centered; I moved it off center towards the other square piece, and I like the energy this ended up giving things.




4. Hang it!

Take a picture of the mock up, too, and use it to finalize things. Without the distraction of the color in the artwork, you might see some wonky things in the layout. In our office, I didn't end up liking the single piece way on the right,kind of hanging out alone, and simply nixed it from the scheme. Make any final adjustments to the mock up, and get ready to hang. Measure the distance from the wire on the back of each piece to the top of the frame, then measure down from the top of the butcher paper to mark the spot for the nail or picture hook. Measure across the paper, too, to find the center. You can pound the nail in and then remove the paper, but if you want to save the paper for another use (fingerpainting!), I recommend hammering the nail in just enough to make a mark, then removing the paper and finishing up with the nail. Repeat. And repeat, repeat, repeat!

Here's the finished product in our office:



It is, by far, my favorite to date. I love the scale and the overall statement, the fact that I was able to collect all of our poster and text-based work into one place, and the accidental color story. But most of all, I like that every single piece here is significant to at least one of us, and most are significant to both of us. The Doug Aitken poster and the small flower drawing beneath it are from Creative time events; Sur Les Paves La Ferme is from the WORKac project at PS1, where Dave worked on the project and I edited the book; the target is from a day Dave spent at a shooting range for a bachelor party and the Fred Tomaselli newspaper print was a wedding present to both of us; the watercolor on the far left was made for Dave by the little boy he was an au pair for in Denmark, and there are three pieces by Clio incorporated, too. (Don't be afraid to mix amateur work in with the "real" art). It was a lot of work to hang this particular wall, especially since I actually did it right for once, but I have to say, I love the result, and the story that it tells about our lives together.

I say, go for it in your own house, and if you do, send me pictures to post!