Not long ago, one of my colleagues told me she and her sister have a yearly tradition of choosing a craft project for the holiday season. This year, they plan to decorate clear glass ornaments with lace from old doilies and table cloths. This got me thinking about ways to use up some of the linen languishing in my stash for over a decade. I am not in the habit of decorating for holidays but the idea scales up beautifully when you are working at the paper lantern scale.

Each lantern is comprised of eleven pentagons assembled over a paper lantern. There are three diameters: 10 inches/ 25.5 cm, 8 inches / 20 cm, and 6 inches / 15 cm.

I’ve included some approximate yardage estimates, and motif sizes, but none of this needs to be exact. Measure your test motif after blocking (see notes below) across the widest point, and multiply by 5 to determine the circumference of your finished project. The larger two sizes are both 5% smaller than the actual lanterns, and I could have gone a little smaller without any issues.