How to Make a Shower Umbrella - Part 2

In the first part of this article, we discussed how we get white umbrellas to use for weddings and showers in the first place, since white umbrellas are not manufactured in any size, a method of dyeing an umbrella to use as bridesmaid's or flower girl's parasols, and the sizes you might prefer to use to make a shower umbrella.  We said that we prefer the 34", which is slightly smaller than the standard size umbrella, but not too small to work well as a shower decoration or to hang over the honoree's chair.

We didn't mention that the 34" and 42" umbrellas with a lace border are actually done here at Thinkwedding by a misguided and masochistic member of our staff.  (Hey, don't rat on me!)  We also didn't mention, and it's not pictured on our website, that we do completely decorated shower umbrellas.  They are done to order, but we have inserted pictures at the bottom of this article.

First, the materials you're going to need.  If you're going to use rows of lace over the entire umbrella, as most people do, you're going to need lace that is 4" wide, and it should be pre-gathered.  That is, it should be already gathered before you purchase it from the store.  It is possible to use ungathered lace, but it's more expensive. 

Materials to create a shower umbrella

34" umbrella - 15 yards gathered lace - white

42" umbrella - 18 yards gathered lace - white

needle & white thread - even if you're using colored lace

straight pins - long quilting pins are great

10 to 25 yards ribbon - satin or organza if you want to decorate with ribbon

pencil or fabric-marking pen (the purple kind that disappear after 24 hours)

If you are planning to use multiple colors, you will find that it can be difficult to get the colors you want with the same pattern and width of lace (gee, how would we know that?).  We ended up solving the problem by dyeing the lace ourselves before it's attached to the umbrella. 

Currently, we use Ritz die and have not found it a problem to use, but in the near future, we plan to try out the floral paint spray we mentioned in Part 1 to color the umbrella fabric to see if it works on lace.  By the time you read this article, we should know how successful it is, so please drop us a line at info@theweddingplace.com and we will be happy to tell you.  By the way, we have given generous yardages--using the materials list above, you should not run out of lace on the last row.

The first thing you want to do is locate a small trash basket to hold the umbrella semi-upright while you work.  The next step, if you're planning to do this while you watch television at night (which is about the only free time most of us have), is to clear anything like sodas off of any nearby tables (again, how would we know that?).

Put your lace either in the basket underneath the umbrella handle, or in a box or other small container on the left side of the umbrella if you're right-handed or the right if you're left-handed.  Get your needle and thread together.  There are very long needles for sale that are designed to be used to make teddy bears, and they come in various thicknesses.  If you can buy a pack of the thinnest long needles, it will cut down on your work, because you're going to be making long basting stitches.  Thread several of the needles in advance, and use double-thread; that is, when you thread the needle, bring both edges of the thread even, and tie them together in a knot at the bottom.

First, cut two pieces of you lace to about 3" to 4".  You will be using that to mark where you will place your rows.  Starting at one spoke, pin the first piece of lace at the bottom of the umbrella.  The edge of the lace should either cover the spoke slightly, or leave the spoke visible, but the edge covered by the lace.  Incidentally, even though your umbrella is curved between the spokes, you will be sewing straight rows of lace.

Pin the next lace sample directly above the first sample to measure where the next row is to go.  The edge of the lace should overlap the first row by between 1.25" to 3/4".  Mark the top edge of both lace samples with your pencil or fabric marker.  Unpin the bottom sample of lace, and move it up to mark the next row.  You will find that you can fit six rows of lace for the 34" umbrella, and 8 rows of lace for the 42" white umbrella.  Use the gather that is already in the lace, until you get to the top two rows.  At that point (more about this later), you will need to gather your lace a little more to fit and look well around a smaller circumference.

Now that you have the starting point of your rows marked--you need to pin the first layer of lace on.  Start at the bottom, about 2.5" from a spoke--not directly on the spoke, and pin your lace all the way around the umbrella.  Where the lace joins, try to match the pattern.  Starting just before the join, insert your needle in the top edge of the lace.  The knot in the needle will be covered by the lace in the next row.  Attach the lace to the umbrella using wide basting stitches on the top and very small stitches underneath, where the stitching will be seen.  You can place your stitches about 1 1/2" to 2" apart, and if you are using a long needle, you can actually take three stitches at a time before pulling up the thread.

Using the marks for the rows that you made with your sample lace, pin and stitch the next row, and all the rows up to the second row from the top.  At that point, you are going to need to gather your lace slightly for the second row from the top, and more for the first row. 

There are two ways to put extra gather in the lace.  The first method is to pin your lace on each spoke and leave extra lace between the spokes as you pin.  If you did it that way, you would sew the lace to the spoke, then place your needle in and out of the lace to the next spoke and then pull up the lace to fit, making it gather.  The second method is to pin the lace to the first spoke, put your needle only in the lace--not the umbrella, and run a line of stitching around, stopping to pin the lace to the umbrella as it fits.  That would mean going around the row twice--once to gather and once to attach it to the umbrella, but it's probably easier than the first method, if this is your first umbrella.

The last row needs a lot of gather, as you will see when you try to pin the lace.  It's a temptation not to be enthusiastic with gathering, but if you don't use almost double the amount of lace, the last row of lace will stand up off of the umbrella instead of laying flat as the other rows do.

We have been asked about hot gluing the lace to the umbrella instead of sewing and we gave it a try.  There is even hot glue on the market especially for fabric.  We found that it didn't secure the lace very well, took longer than sewing, was awkward and difficult--and an awful mess.  The glue designed for fabric was actually worse than the clear type of hot glue.  We also tried the lower temperature hot glue, and it wasn't any easier or better.

We did find, though, that if we used organza ribbon, to finish the umbrella instead of satin, it was a dream to do with hot glue.  This is the top of a baby shower umbrella we did for a party supply store that wanted to rent out shower umbrellas.  The ribbon on top took all of about three minutes to do with hot glue.  We tried another umbrella with satin ribbon, but the results were not worth it.  It handled about like the lace did when we tried to use hot glue, and we ended up having to sew it on.

The bottom line on finishing your umbrella with ribbon is that if you want to use satin ribbon, you're probably going to have to sew it.  If you use organza ribbon you can easily get away with hot glue; in fact, we did a better job with the hot glue than we did with needle and thread, and it didn't take nearly as long to do it.

Ok, as promised, here are some pictures of the fully decorated shower umbrellas we have done, and they are currently available for sale.  We usually sell these for between $35.00 and $40.00 depending on the size and whether it's all-white or two or more colors (dyeing, remember?), and because our market is generally party supply stores and catering halls and restaurants, we don't have them pictured on our site, other than to mention that we do them.

Please click on each picture to see a larger image

The umbrella on the right was the most difficult and time-consuming to do; it is made of white lace, with alternating rows of pink and blue satin instead of lace.  The effect, as you can see, was lovely, but the satin was much more difficult to both handle and to gather properly.  We had difficulties getting enough of a gather in the satin, and it was was much more difficult to accurately cut the satin into 5" strips, then put 1/2" hem on both sides so that it wouldn't ravel.

The third umbrella has been decorated with 5/8" organza ribbon; in fact, it is the ribbon that we sell on our website (well, it was handy!).  The ribbon was not sewn--it was hot glued, and it only took us a few minutes to achieve the effect that you see here.

Good luck!  By the way, if we have just found a source for the floral paint that we mentioned in part 1.  For some reason, it was difficult to find on the web using the search engines.  Because outbound links count in the search engines, we are not going to mention the site here, but if you will drop us a line at info@thinkwedding.com, we will be glad to share the information.

Since we've offered to share our experiences with you, we would appreciate it if you would write to us if you have something to contribute or to ask.  We're always learning!  Hey, at our ages it's about all you have left!