So You Think You Can Decorate: Week 5 Challenge~

Welcome to Week 5 of So You Think You Can Decorate! And this week's challenge is fabric!



I must admit that I have a bit of a fabric obsession. It's amazing what fabric can do for a room. Let's take my son's room for example. A typical basement bedroom. It has a very small window which doesn't provide much in the way of a focal point. (or much light for that matter, so please forgive the photography.)

Here's the after of that same room...with fabric added in the form of a roman shade, drapes and accent pillows. What a difference!! (Again, please forgive the low light photography....not the best to show off how cute everything actually turned out...sigh.)

First up, the roman shades and drapes. I actually made the shades using a vinyl mini-blind, Fabritac glue, and denim. A super easy and inexpensive way to create custom roman shades in whatever fabric you choose. And when I say easy, I mean this is seriously easy folks!! And since I used a tutorial to make these....I'm going to share it with you! Here's the link.

The drapes were created using blue and white ticking fabric. They were very simple to sew. I chose not to create a rod pocket, so all I did was hem the top and bottom, leaving the selvages instead of hemming the sides. Then I pinched the tops and attached curtain rings to hang them.

Here's a closeup of the back of the roman shade, so you can see the "skeleton" I created from the mini blind, and I tried to get a decent closeup of the window treatment....you can sort of see the folds of the roman shade...(drat that basement lighting.)

In this photo, you can see the way the ticking drapes frame out the bed. The addition of handmade accent pillows adds softness and personality to the bed.

I made these pillows using one of my favorite tricks...photo transfer paper. I just love my son's handsome face looking back from his bed...even when he's not sleeping in it. The firetruck pillow features a vintage firetruck photo and more blue ticking to tie in with the drapes.

A couple of tips on using photo transfer paper...first, I recommend the Avery brand. I am not being paid by them, I have just tried pretty much EVERY brand of photo transfer paper out there, and I have had better and more consistent results with Avery than with any other brand.

Second, if you are using text in your design, MAKE SURE YOU REVERSE IT. You will need a photo editing program to reverse the text...but make sure you do it. Unless you are extremely particular about an image, they can usually be printed without reversing them. I didn't reverse either of the images used in this project, and I can't see a difference.

Then all you need to do is follow the directions on the package. Photo transfer paper is very easy to use, and can create some great custom pieces for your home.

For the pillow with my son's photo on it, I simply ironed the photo transfer directly onto the fabric I was using for the pillow. For the firetruck pillow, I ironed it on a seperate piece of canvas, cut it out, and then sewed it as a patch onto the ticking fabric. (Which leads me to another tip on using transfer paper...you don't want to use the transfer paper on fabric with a print...the print will show through).

After seeing how cute the portrait pillow turned out, I think I may have to make one of each of my other three kiddos....wouldn't they make a great addition to a family room?

Like I said, it's amazing what fabric can do for a room!!

The competition is getting tough over there at So You Think You Can Decorate. If you liked this project, please hop over and give me your vote. I could really use it. ;-)


Have a great Monday~


xoxo
Wendy