Shelter From the Storm

I think everyone who's ever been to Gulf Wars in Gleann Abhann knows about the little white canvas parasols.  It seems every lady has one - they're affordable, pretty, not too modern-looking, and paintable.  I bought one a few years ago myself, and I painted it...and did a terrible job.  I knew I'd either need to replace it, or just re-cover it, but in the interim, I decided to see what it would look like if I spray-painted it to cover up the silliness that I had made:

WOW NO. 

Just...no. 

Since BAM was going to be rainy (scratch that: it's always rainy at BAm), I went ahead and stripped the cover off the frame, cut out one of the sections, and copied it.  I made two adjustments to the pattern:  I straightened out the curve in the panel edge (see the yellow arrows in the first picture?), and I lengthened each panel so that my new parasol would have a bit of an apron to hang down, like the one in this painting: 

Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cataneo,
Sir Anthony van Dyck, 1623

And this is my finished parasol:  

Just the little bit of change in the shape of the panels makes the thing feel HUGE.  There are tension issues with two of the struts (center picture, arrow), which are easily fixed by undoing the little keeper at the end of the strut and loosening the fabric.  

I spray painted the finial gold, and tacked down a green velvet ribbon to cover the raw edges of the fabric at the top.  The fabric itself is from an Ikea RITVA curtain panel - cotton, with a linen-esque weave.  I bought a big pile of them from my old dance studio in town when it shut down last month, and have been using the fabric for many things, from tablecloths to bags to flags (which we'll talk about later this week, tee-hee). 

And did it keep the rain off me?  You bet your ass it did. I used an entire can of Camp-Dry on this thing before I left for the event:  seams, then panels, then the whole thing again once it was dry, inside and out.  100% waterproof.  Yay!  It'll wear off over time, and when it does, I might try painting my device on it.  Or stars.  We'll see. 

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