Reveal #1, without furniture

The guest room is finished. It's empty and ready for furniture...and stuff. I thought I'd take some pictures before it gets filled up.

But first, a "before" picture. However, I didn't take one before the demolition and I couldn't find any good photos of the room before we redid it. The best one I could come up with was one I took of a purse and skirt I made...with a bonus action shot of Felix about to jump up on top of a cabinet. There's not much to say about it really. The room was mint-green and had one window. And it had wood floors, but they were in pretty bad shape and there was water damage in the middle of the room (waterbed?).

We changed the window to French doors and added a window on the right wall. The paint color is a light purple-gray - Lowes Olympic paint "Bad Lands", to be specific. My husband refinished floors. We also added the ceiling light and added and moved some wall outlets. Ok, to be clear, the contractor did the electrical and put in the door and window and we had a drywall guy redo the walls. Although we're capable of doing the work, we just don't have the time anymore. I did get out the drywall mud and patch the inside of the closet though! I'm pretty good with the hawk (it's a flat surface with a handle that you use for holding the mud while you use a putty knife to apply it). And I also painted.

I designed the closet shelves and our contractor built them. I included a pull-out ironing board, which was expensive, but worth it I think. The closet doors are 3 sliding doors. The outermost one, which is visible here, will eventually have a tack-board mounted on it.

Here's a view of the closet doors closed. Two of the doors have mirrors on them.

Since I'm showing pictures, I should also show off the hall bathroom, which we also redid. This is actually the second re-do, although the first was only partial. About 10 years ago (wow, has it been that long?) we painted and changed out the vanity, sink and mirror. At the time I was into a beachy look so we painted the walls a sea-green and I added a little bit of decorative fish. Here is the before:

We didn't redo the bathtub at that time, which was a one-piece vinyl surround.

And here's how it looks now! The entire room was gutted and we had a skylight put in. I designed everything, from the tile layout to the vanity, which our contractor made for us out of walnut.

Here's a closeup of the vanity...and yes, there is a knob missing. Actually three knobs are missing. Some of them were damaged and I had to reorder and just haven't gotten around to putting them on. Originally we were going to have a Caesarstone counter but the walnut was so beautiful I didn't want to cover it up.

The bathtub is an airjet and it makes lots of bubbles.

I should also share photos of the master bedroom and bathroom, which have long been finished but I'll save that for another time.

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.

Home dec fabric shopping in my future

Wow, where has the time gone? My last post was over a month ago.

The guest room/sewing room #2 is almost done. I know I said that last month, but now it really is. I just have to paint the trim on the window frame and touch up the trim elsewhere in the room, then I can move furniture back in. And there will be pictures.

I've been shopping for fabric to make the window treatments and other stuff. The walls are a light purple/gray color and after looking at a few online sources as well as some brick and mortar stores,  I'd given up finding home dec fabric with purple in it that didn't contain grapes or hyacinths. I didn't want a floral because I didn't want the room to be overly girly. Ideally I wanted something modern, a la Merimekko, and was even (sort of) willing to pay the bucks for it. But I couldn't find anything that really fit the mood or the scale. They have some fabulous prints if you have a large space to carry it.

I found the perfect fabrics nearly in my own backyard. No, not my existing, vast fabric stash currently housed in the cargo trailer in our driveway (no, the trailer is not full of my fabric even though my husband jokes that it is). I found the fabrics at the Hancock Fabric store about a mile away. I have made all my calculations and think I know the right amounts to purchase so I'm going to do that this week while the sales are on and the fabric is on the shelf. But fortunately it's also online so I have a backup.

For the roman shades on the French doors:

For the curtain for the window and as the covering for my design board (mounted on one of the closet doors):

For the duvet cover:

I plan to use some of the houndstooth and the stripe for neckroll pillows for the bed and also maybe introduce some yellow as an accent color in the pillows. I'm looking for a darker purple to use for the bedskirt and maybe I'll incorporate that into the pillows and/or duvet as well.

I flipped when I found that leaf pattern fabric because I have found so little with purple in it that wasn't (overly) floral or juvenile. It's a cotton fabric and it didn't really sit well with me for the shades, curtain or design board cover but I think it will be perfect for a duvet cover.

I really hope I can make these items. I don't doubt my abilities to sew them, but it's my motivation to do home dec that is lacking. I hate working with large volumes of fabric. But I am inspired by my choices, so I will just have to set my mind to it and just do it.