One of my favorite parts of being an adult is not having to ask for permission before starting my crafty endeavors. The floor lamp next to our front picture window had a very plain shade. I decided to spruce it up by branding it as a Casa de Costello original.
Last week's tage sale treasure hunt (you can read more about that here) left me with a generous addition to my stash of embroidery floss:
The colors I chose for this project (blue, green, pink and orange) were inspired by this stained glass window that hangs in our front picture window:
It is made of salvaged materials and was created by one of my friend Laura's art students in her Art Four class three years ago. The little pop of orange in the lower right corner is subtle here, but can be very bright when the sun hits it just the right way.
I began this project by tracing my hand on plain white paper and cutting it out. Then I pinned the hand print to the lampshade and backstitched around it. I did my hand first with green embroidery floss and then The Mister's in blue.
Here's my hand. The stitching on the reverse side of the shade is really obvious in this picture, but less so in the house. I'm OK with that, though, since we don't typically bring our floor lamp outside.
Here's a close up of me backstitching around the pattern for The Mister's hand.
This is what it looked like when The Mister's hand pattern was pinned to the shade. He traced his own hand and I like how he included the outline of his wedding ring. Being married to me can be tough--I'm glad he's still willing to publicly acknowledge that he's mine.
Having said that, I could have done a better job sewing around the ring portion of his pattern--escpecially the side close to his middle finger. The next time I do this (there are rumblings that Grammy Susan might like one) I need to make a conscious effort to make smaller stitches. I think a little bit of quality was sacrificed in my excitement to finish this project.
Little Tiger and The Milk Belly Princess' hands were small enough that I could include both of their hands in the project. One hand from each of us circling the shade would have been better than nothing, but being able to change it up a bit adds more interest. Here is a close up of Little Tiger's hands:
...and here are the hands of The Milk Belly Princess.
Here's the finished lamp shade back on its perch. In the background you can see Melissa Crowe's felt play board that I made and wrote about here. The girls still really enjoy playing with it.