The fabric for the foyer bench arrived this weekend and I don’t think I like it. Now, to be clear, I love the fabric itself, and when I took it out of the box my first thought was that I would like to wash it and make a throw out of it. When I started my interior decorating business, I had an office at a local furniture store downtown called Spice, and they had beautiful washed velvet throws and linens. I know washing velvet isn’t really something you should do, but it really softened it and made for beautiful bedding.
Anyway, I have enough of it to throw away, which is good because I don’t actually like it sitting on the bench in the bedroom foyer.
I don’t really know what I don’t like about it. Too dark? Too busy? Too green? I can’t say exactly. And I definitely don’t like the tea towels I bought for one of the pillows. So I thought I could just keep the two pillows I already have, but I don’t like those either. It just seems a bit too boring to me.
Of course I will hang this picture on the wall above the bench. But even then it still seems too boring to me.
So I wash the velvet fabric and use it to make a throw that I keep either next to the armchair in the bedroom or in the living room. In winter I always want a comfortable throw. Or I might use it to make some throw pillows for the bedroom, although I think the pattern might be a little too bold for the headboard fabric. I’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I went through my fabric stash to see if I could find something suitable. I didn’t really have anything on hand that would work for the bench, but I found this piece of fabric and decided to give it a try just to see if I liked the overall pattern and look. The color itself is completely wrong. It’s too blue for a teal foyer. But I love the pattern and how the more geometric pattern looks with the colorful tea towel (i.e. the future pillowcase).
And I really like how it all looks with the picture I want to hang on the wall above the bench.
Since there are no fabric stores left in town, I went back online to see what I could find in a teal and white geometric pattern. This time I went straight to Spoonflower as they have well over 750,000 designs from thousands of independent developers. I simply searched “teal and white geometric” under “fabric” and then narrowed it down to a few favorites.
It also comes in this green color which could contrast nicely with the teal grass wallpaper I will be installing on the upper walls in the foyer and bedroom.
If I stick with teal and white, I think this one might be my favorite. It’s a fun pattern and it has just enough white to keep it bright and interesting without the white looking too stark. At least that’s how it looks in the picture. We’ll see what it looks like when I get the sample.
It also comes in this pretty green.
I have ordered samples for all copies and am now waiting. I can’t tell you how much I hate buying fabric online – making decisions, waiting for samples, choosing from samples, making a purchase, waiting for the fabric to arrive. Oh, how I miss the days when there were actual fabric stores in town where I could go, make my purchase, and come home with the instant gratification of fabric in hand and ready to get started on a project. I hate it so much that I very often forego ordering samples and just take the chance to order fabrics, but like in this situation, that doesn’t always work out well for me in the end.
But I really want this area to look nice. I have so few options for adding color, pattern, and fabric to the foyer (all the fabric will be in this one corner), so I don’t want to just settle on something that’s somehow appealing meh. I want to take this one opportunity to bring fabric into the foyer and make it as cute, colorful and vibrant as possible.
