Sewing Lampshades

Sew 18 beautiful tailored, pleated and loose lampshades to suit your style. Learn to sew your own stunning lampshades using this comprehensive step-by-step guide from the founder of the Traditional Upholstery School, Joanna Heptinstall. The book contains 18 fully illustrated step-by-step projects, featuring tailored, pleated, faux pleated and loose cover designs. Each technique is covered in detail, from measuring your fabric, choosing a frame shape, calculating your seams, creating a shade, adding trims and choosing a stand. The projects require few specialist tools, can be easily customised to suit your home decor, and cover a range of styles, sizes and fabrics. The book is bursting with inspirational images, along with tips and tricks of the trade that Joanna has acquired over her successful career in upholstery.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This early guide provides instruction for making lampshades using fabric and remains of helpful and practical use for anyone interested in lamp making, textiles, design and handicrafts today. Featuring extensive illustrations, it includes methods and advice on how to cover shades using different materials in a variety of ways. Contents include: Making Lampshades; Fabric-Covered Lampshades; Sectional Fabric Shades; A Bowed Empire Shade with a Balloon Lining; A Lace or Net Over Satin shade; A French Shade; Pleated and Swathed Silk shades. Many early books are becoming extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing this classic work, which has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience, in a high quality and affordable edition. It comes complete with a newly written introduction and features reproductions of the illustrations and diagrams featured in the original.

Few growing up in the aftermath of World War II will ever forget the horrifying reports that Nazi concentration camp doctors had removed the skin of prisoners to makes common, everyday lampshades. In The Lampshade, bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of one of these awful objects, and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning, of what can only be described as an icon of terror. Jacobson’s mind-bending historical, moral, and philosophical journey into the recent past and his own soul begins in Hurricane Katrina–ravaged New Orleans. It is only months after the storm, with America’s most romantic city still in tatters, when Skip Henderson, an old friend of Jacobson’s, purchases an item at a rummage sale: a very strange looking and oddly textured lampshade. When he asks what it’s made of, the seller, a man covered with jailhouse tattoos, replies, “That’s made from the skin of Jews.” The price: $35. A few days later, Henderson sends the lampshade to Jacobson, saying, “You’re the journalist, you find out what it is.” The lampshade couldn’t possibly be real, could it? But it is. DNA analysis proves it. This revelation sends Jacobson halfway around the world, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where the lampshades were supposedly made on the order of the infamous “Bitch of Buchenwald,” Ilse Koch. From the time he grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, Jacobson has heard stories about the human skin lampshade and knew it to be the ultimate symbol of Nazi cruelty. Now he has one of these things in his house with a DNA report to prove it, and almost everything he finds out about it is contradictory, mysterious, shot through with legend and specious information. Through interviews with forensic experts, famous Holocaust scholars (and deniers), Buchenwald survivors and liberators, and New Orleans thieves and cops, Jacobson gradually comes to see the lampshade as a ghostly illuminator of his own existential status as a Jew, and to understand exactly what that means in the context of human responsibility. One question looms as his search goes on: what to do with the lampshade—this unsettling thing that used to be someone? It is a difficult dilemma to be sure, but far from the last one, since once a lampshade of human skin enters your life, it is very, very hard to forget.

This practical handbook teaches you all the methods needed to make your own lampshades in a wide range of styles — from the simple drum hard lampshade to the more complex hand-sewn traditional gathered and pleated designs. As well as clear demonstrations, it gives information on frames and fittings, how to work with different fabrics and papers, and showcases how using your own designs offers a truly bespoke approach. Here you will learn everything you need to make wonderful lampshades to feature in your home, or to offer professionally.

Originally published in the 1900s, this book contains extensive detailed information on the many aspects of stitchery and needlecraft. Alongside these detailed answers to many needlecraft questions you will find intricate diagrams and photographic plates, making this an excellent addition to the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in the subject.

An EXACT reproduction from the original book LAMPSHADES: HOW TO MAKE THEM by Olive Earl first published in 1921. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book