Bring the crafty goodness

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I wanted to start making cool projects and tutorials to share with everyone. Todays swanky project is a hanging pendant lamp made out of ribbon.

I also posted this on my blog, it can be seen here. If you wanted to book mark it. I know how things can get buried here. Anyway, enjoy!



First the materials list. You will need the following:



1. Sewing machine, while this project can be sewn by hand I prefer a sewing machine it makes the whole project go a lot faster.

2. Hanging pendant lamp kit. I got this baby at Walmart on clearance. I have seen them in places like Home Depot and Lowes in the lighting section. I think I paid $2 for it.

3. 16 gauge wire.

4. Thread to match ribbon.

5. Wire cutters.

6. Straight pins, lots of them.

7. Wired ribbon, I used two spools of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon. Each spool was 4 yards.

8. Other typical sewing tools, (scissors, rotary cutter, ruler)

On to the assembly.



First step was to cut the ribbon in strips. I cut them 20 1/2 inches long.

Then pin strips together, I just laid the ribbon over each other. I wanted to see the over lapping. I only overlapped by a little.

Sew up each over lapped strip, the goal here is to make one large rectangle of fabric out of the ribbon strips. This is the most time consuming part of the project, be sure to go slowly because there is wire in the ribbon, it can get caught in your machine. If sewing by hand I suggest a simple running stitch.

After the sheet of ribbon is done it's time to fold over the top edge and sew along making a place to run the wire. While sewing along you are going to need to leave three openings this is shown in the photo below.



This next step I do because I like to work with clean edges. I square up the edges and cut with a rotary cutter to make a straight edge.



Now pin the edges together and sew up the side but stopping before the folded over part because that is where the wire needs to be run.



Run the wire through the top, secure it together by making two loops and attaching them. In the image above there are 3 arrows, they point to the areas in the edging that was not sewn so that the wire can be accessed. Cut three pieces of wire long enough to wrap around the wire and put into the center to wrap around the light. See image.



Finished project.



illumated