A DIY Lampshade Project using Traditional Greek Embroidery

Last year I really got into and explored embroidery in some depth. Having learnt some of the more commonly used stitches, I took a course specializing in some traditional Greek stitches.

This was a live online course organised by the YWCA in Athens. We met online once a week for 7 live sessions, where our wonderful and very talented tutor walked us through the steps to learn several traditional Greek stitches pertaining to the prefecture of Attica. Truly I’d been looking for something like this for such a long time and felt that the universe had been listening to me.

As soon as I finished the course I was itching to take what I learnt and make an embroidered lampshade using one of the many stitches I learnt. One of which was one called “Eleftheri Attikis”, loosely translated as “Freehand Stitch of Attica”. Here below are a few progress photos using this particular stitch:

Our tutor gave us a typical Greek traditional design using this stitch, (see below) which I adapted to create my own composition and colour palette suitable for the lampshade I had in mind. I didn’t want it to be too complicated or difficult for me to finish. Having said that, and true to form, I of course overcomplicated it and, as a result, underestimated the amount of time it would take to finish it!

Versions of my composition and colour palettes

Progress images

The Process

• I used a bright red linen/viscose fabric folded twice for extra stability and traced my pattern onto it using a heat pen whose markings disappear when ironed.
• The stitch I chose is called Attikis and the motifs in the pattern are ones that are best suited to this particular stitch.
• Once I finished the embroidery I took it to a professional lampshade maker in Athens, who made it up for me in my desired dimensions and using a turquoise trim that I chose to complement my colours and contrasted beautifully with the red base fabric.
• Then I needed to find a suitable lamp base, which wasn’t such an easy task! In retrospect I probably should have done it the other way around; found the lamp base and then designed a suitable lampshade. Oh well!!
• After much searching I eventually found a suitable ceramic lampshade online. It was white but I painted it in a light turquoise colour using my favourite Flasche paints by Lefranc Bourgeois. Et voila!

Before and After painting my ceramic lamp base

The Final Dimensions:

lampshade: d27 x h23 cm 
lamp base: h24 x w15 (at its widest)

A couple of things I might do differently next time:

• Instead of using the same fabric folded over double for stability I would either use a more tightly woven and heavier fabric in a single layer or a cotton calico as backing if light.
• This isn’t an absolute as I discovered I could paint on other ceramic or wooden lamp bases, but I might choose to find a lamp base first and use that as a starting point to designing my embroidered lampshade.