My Crochet Lampshade - 2015 Project

It's been a while since I've wrote to you and I have a lot of things to tell you, but first things first my crochet lampshade. Last year I was assigned a major work (by mum) to crochet a lampshade but not just a basic lampshade, a lampshade made of crochet bits and bobs stitched together -I can't explain it any other way.

At the start of the year mum asked me to make and finish a lampshade by the end of term 2. That didn't happen and I actually (completely) finished it in the first week of January (2016). There are many reasons why I didn't finish it earlier; I'm lazy, I didn't know what I wanted to do, how I wanted it to look or how I was going to do it. Even though I finished it way way way too late I still absolutely love it!

I made this stop motion video to show it from every angle and I really like it. If its going to fast and you want to view it slower click the little cog on the right of the bar, click speed and choose 0.5 or lower.

If you were wondering I came up with most of the patterns, the only things I got online were the flower and leaf patterns. Everything was mainly free hand with the flowers filling in the gaps.

When I was making it, instead of holding it up to the lampshade all the time I cut out a strip of (calico) fabric the size of the shade and made the pieces to fit that.

How I attached the crocheting to the shade is a simple concept (not so easy in theory though), after I made and joined all the big elements like the tree, sun, grass, etc. with flowers in between I joined the ends together however I designed it, making sure to test it on the shade multiple times to get the right fit. Once it fit I went around the top edge decreasing all the way around then I did another row of one in every stitch which fit my shade perfectly.
With the method I can take the crochet 'cover' off if I need to replace or fix anything on the shade or cover, I think this is a pretty neat addition.

When I finally finished the shade I entered it into the local show to be displayed and judged. I got a highly commended award and a ribbon. I was hoping to get a better award as it took sooo long to make and think of the things but hey at least I won something! <that sounds mean but I'm just being honest with you.

Apart from what I said I don't really know what else to say so I'm going to end it here but if there is something you would like me to talk about in another post or any questions you might I would be happy to answer them (maybe a Q&A?) and talk more thoroughly about it :)

Happy crocheting,
Ruby xx
P.S. If there is any typing mistakes its because I don't like re-reading what I write