Birds of a… Fabric?

12 Comments

Posted by Rebecca, March 9th, 2011

I know it’s Wednesday, which is normally What I Ate Wednesday, but Mike and I are being super lazy this week. I’m on spring break from school (yay!) so we’re trying to enjoy my stress free days with lots of catching up on shows and ice cream on the couch. We made shepard’s pie again this week since we loved it so much last week. We’ve been eating the leftovers of that, plus some pizza and bagels we got from a visit to my parents’ this weekend. So we’ve been rather uneventful food-wise… as well as house-wise. We’ll be back to our normal antics this weekend 🙂

One thing I’m hoping to decide on this week is the fabric choices for the office. Here is where we are as of tonight…

These are all from the Ty Pennington collection at fabric.com. Who knew Ty made fabrics? Weird. I was drawn to them because of the mix of greens, grays and white that would perfectly compliment our gray stripes and green carpet. Plus I could have sworn they were around $8/yard compared to the Dwell Studio or Waverly fabrics which were around $16/yard. But of course, after I order samples the prices go up! Or maybe I’m imagining things…

My number one choice from these options is the one I thought I would love and the reason why I chose these fabrics- the white “kaleidoscope” one as Mike calls it…

It’s the blossom pattern in chartreuse.  I love this for a few reasons… 1) it has both shades of gray from our stripes 2) it has a white background to lighten up the room 3) it has a circular pattern to compliment the linear-ness of the stripes. Online Mike thought it was too girly, but after seeing the sample he agrees with me. This pattern will make our curtain panels, plus it will cover half of our Ikea storage boxes.

I want another pattern to add to the mix so it’s a little more interesting in this space. The second fabric will just cover some of the storage boxes so it’s more of an accent, I suppose. I thought this one was a shoe-in, but after seeing it, I don’t think it’s graphic enough or bold enough in the color department to compete with the stripes and blossom…

Then I thought maybe this bright green one would be good since it has such a visually appealing pattern, but I think it’s too much green…

So I was left with this guy, the birdy one…

Online I wasn’t crazy about this, but once I put it next to the blossom pattern? Something happened. And I liked it.

I like that it has a dark gray background, as well as some light gray birds to blend everything together nicely. Besides owls, I’m not a big bird person. The fabric isn’t appealing to me on it’s own, but within this context? I like it.

However, Mike does not. He’s not feeling the birds… or the butterflies. I’ve tried, it ain’t happening. Whaaamp whaamp.

I pick and choose my battles and this just wasn’t worth any sort of battle for 2 little boxes. We try very hard around here to make rooms we both love and enjoy, so if Mike really despises the birds, I’m not going to use them. I’m thinking of ordering one more sample in this pattern…

I know there is no green in this one, but I think that it’s the dark gray of the birdy one that makes me like it. We’re planning a couple of other green things around the room so I’m not sure I necessarily need any more green.

Halfway back to the drawing board I go! Goal: to get the perfectly gender neutral office!

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12 Responses to “Birds of a… Fabric?”

  1. Emily says:

    Ooh. I like that collection and am on my way to check it out. Kaleidoscope’s my favorite but I also like that new swatch you want to order – and it’d also look great for a project on my list….

  2. Okay, maybe I’m just tired… but I can’t see any bird in the fabric samples. (Maybe it’s time to go to bed now…)

  3. Janis from Scotland, UK says:

    Rebecca, saw your post on YHL re cats and jute. I can say, without hesitation, that my cats will claw anything with a jute/jute-like consistency – they just cannot help themselves LOL. We had four cats with our oldest dying just last year and our others love to claw at our door mat which is coir. I think you would just be wasting your money. On saying that my boy, Harvie, likes to claw at our wool carpet!! I usually just clap my hands to stop him. I’ve heard some people in USA have their cat(s) claws removed and not sure what the law is in USA but in UK it is illegal to de-claw a cat and I can think of no other inhumane action than this to a pet cat. Love your blog.

    • Mike says:

      Hello from across the pond! I think our cats just love to ruin things we love. They ignore the items we WANT them to scratch — old couch, scratching posts, etc — and go straight for the good and new stuff.

    • Rebecca says:

      Hi Janis! Our cats have their claws, except for one that we adopted who was already declawed. I wish declawing was illegal here! I did a little research on it after we adopted her and she was having emotional issues adjusting to our other cats. What I read about what she went through was horrific. I remember reading that the US is one of the few places where it is still allowed, yet there is such little education around here about what it truly is!

      Thanks for stopping by!

  4. I KNEW you were going to pick the “kaleidoscope” fabric! I love that choice, and it will be great the sample you want to order!

    Also, dang it! I so meant to do What I Ate Wednesday this week! Granted I only took iPhone pictures, but we made a salad, which is a lot better than all the other Wednesdays when we somehow always ended up eating frozen pizza.

  5. Haha! I think I am on Team I Love (Almost All) Graphic Prints. But that is probably only because Apple doesn’t make fabric 😉

  6. Janis from Scotland says:

    Hi Mike and Rebecca -I think Canada and USA still make it legal to de-claw cats. Unfortunately cats will always go to what they want and I agree, Mike, it’s usually the “good stuff” they go to and not the old piece of furniture. We used to keep a small plastic spray water pistol and every time we caught one of them scratching on a piece we didn’t want them to, we squirted them. You just have to make sure they don’t see where it is coming from and then, after a while, they start to associate the piece of furniture with being sprayed at. It is obviously not painful to the cat but they don’t like it. We also spread some catnip around the base of our scratching post. Let me say though even with all these measures they just sometimes head for the piece you’ve been trying to keep good. There’s a saying “Dogs have owners, Cats have staff”!!!

  7. I recognize that cute green binder from Target – I have the same one (for my recipe organization that I have yet to organize and i doubt a few more months of procrastination will hurt…)

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