Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Fabric is bought...now I have to sew it

I bought all the fabric for the bedroom along with some ribbon and trims to use on pillows. However, when I had the purple leaf print and lilac stripe fabric in the cart, the fabrics felt a bit too young. I also decided that the stripe fabric might look like I hung a sheet on the wall, so I browsed the store for a different fabric for the window curtain. I ended up going back to a fabric that I'd seen before but wasn't quite sure of. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it because it was on clearance and no longer on the Hancock website. It's from their Kathy Ireland collection. Yes, I could take a picture, but it's late and dark - i.e., flash picture only...anyway it's not very complicated to describe. It's purple and green large scale plaid - I think it's called window pane? There a little touch of gold thread in it too. Oh, and it's fairly sheer. I'm hoping it will make the room a little more sophisticated looking. I also found a deeper purple fabric for the other side of the duvet cover and maybe a pillow or accent on a pillow. I bought extra of the striped fabric for the bed skirt - I'll still use the striped fabric on the design board.

Duvet covers take a lot of fabric! I found this handy yardage calculation in the book Sandra Betzina Sews for Your Home:

A = width of comforter + 3 inches
B = length of comforter + 3 inches
C = width of fabric - 4 inches
D = repeat of fabric
E = B+D
F = A/C (round up - this tells you how many widths of fabric you have to use)
G = E x F

And finally,  G/36 = number of yards to buy for one side of the duvet.

One side. I emphasize that because I calculated I needed about 6 yards of fabric (oh yeah, add 1/2 yard if the fabric will shrink) for that one side and this is for a twin size bed! No wonder we're not all making our duvet covers unless we make them out of sheets bought on clearance. Even with my coupon for 40% off one cut of fabric, I decided to not make the cover entirely out of the $9/yard cotton fabric. Besides, there wasn't enough on the bolt (I think a new bolt only has 10 yards anyway). I found a perfectly lovely deep purple ($3.99/yard) cotton blend to use for the other side of the cover but it's such a nice shade that I think it won't be the underside all of the time.

The guy cutting my fabric complimented me on my coordination of fabrics. He envied my sewing room plans and I got advice from him on how to rig up the roman shades on the French doors. All in all it was a very successful shopping trip.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:23 AM

    I wanted to say "Thank you" for taking the time to share your crafting, travels, home renovations and everything else on your blog. Even though I've been a reader for a long time, I recently read your blog from beginning to end and really enjoyed it.

    I too dread home dec. I have the fabric and lining to make new living room drapes but dread the measuring, cutting, prewashing, and dealing with mountains of fabric.

    Penny B

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