shades- a working solution

I love that I have a stash of fabric.  I love that it is sometimes a bit more varied than just plain old quilting cottons.  And today I'm especially grateful that I had just over a yard of something for drapery backing.  either rain no stain or something like that.  it is a cream type canvas and it is heavy.  and when i laid the pattern for the shade replacement on it, it would fit twice!  So then I pondered that a for a few days.

Today I dragged that heavy drapery roll with the just over one yard of canvas type fabric out of the garage fully expecting to cut out the two pieces I needed.  Except... ut oh...you might think... except that i noticed there was a piece that was about 12" square that was sort of extra.  So I cut that off.  I cut that piece in exact halves planning to check to see if it would shrink in water as the rest of the fabric is rather dirty looking.  And then I let it soak for an hour in what started out as very hot water.  Well that fabric was hard pressed to get officially wet through and through.  So I wrung it out and laid it on a paper towel and let it begin to dry. 

In the meantime, I got out the newly remembered Neocolor II pastels watercolor sticks that I got for Christmas last year.  I had recalled those and dug them out while I was pondering the discovery of the canvas piece of fabric the past couple of days.  I had done a bit of research on how to use them on fabric.  I knew that they could be used that way because that is how I justified asking for them for Christmas.  If I found I did not like to do watercolor painting, or if I was just no good at it, I could always use them on fabric .  Clever I am for justifying a new craft don't you think?

I then picked out 5 of them that were close in color to the paint colors i'd used on the lamp bases and began to roughly use them on the dry piece of canvas.  Then I used a very wet artist brush and tried to blend the colors together on the fabric.  NO success.  The fabric was repelling the water.  Well I finished what I had done anyway to the whole piece to see what happened later and then got up and got the wet piece out and proceeded to roughly use the wax pastels on that piece in the same manner.  Used the artist brush again and SUCCESS! 

you should be able to see from the picture below that i am indeed really close in the coloring to the already painted lamp bases.  there is a plain white terry cloth towel over the tops of the lamps and the two pieces are laid on top of that.  Wet piece on the left and dry piece on the right.

Tomorrow I will heat set the two pieces and then cut out the main piece of fabric using my pattern.

I'm sooo excited about this lovely turn of events after my disappointment at finding the best fabric for the shades and knowing it was many years old and unlikely to find 2 yards of it.

hope your day is as productive and surprisingly crafty
denise/deBRAT in Florida