One Room Challenge with Calling It Home: Week Three

 

Today, I was going to talk about what I am putting on the walls of the laundry room...wallpaper, stencil, something else... But I am still struggling with what to do, so for this week, at least, I am moving on to....

Window curtains and fabric

I want to make short curtains to hang on the window above the washer and dryer.

I was inspired by the fabric on this couch designed by Dorothy Draper.

Via

 

Being the state flower of West Virginia, the Rhododendron can be found in the decor of Dorothy Draper's revamp of the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, WV. From wallpaper, curtains and rugs to the plates and dishes, the flower made it's way on to many things. You can even now buy PJ's with the Draper Rhododendron print.

Via

I have always loved this flower especially the pink version, although I have also seen it bloom in white, purple, red, orange, and yellow. When I went on the traditional three day backpacking trips with my childhood summer camp, we would often hike through mountains covered with these beautiful flowering bushes.

Via

So with my inspiration in mind,  I was off to hunt for rhododendron patterned fabric to make the curtains. Here are a few of my finds...

Fabric 1/Fabric 2/Fabric 3/Fabric 4/Fabric 5/Fabric 6

Of course, here I ran into a problem. While I found some beautiful fabric patterns, I felt like Goldilocks who couldn't find one that was "just right". The fabric was either outside my budget, not the right colors, or only available to the trade. I even looked on Etsy and Ebay, but no luck. I know I was being a little bit of a perfectionist here!

Then I remembered Linda's post about Spoonflower.com. I watched a few of their You Tube videos to get a feel for how to create my own fabric. (I must admit I never really thought about repeats in a fabric pattern...now I know.) While the website did suggest some programs to make the design, I stuck to what I know and used Paint and then saved the image as a picture file to my computer. Once I got a feel for doing it, creating my pattern for the fabric was easy. I was able to make it exactly what I wanted. I felt so cool when I was done...I have now created fabric!

There is the option to order a sample first, but I am on this tight ORC deadline see, so I just went all it and ordered the yardage I needed.

It will arrive in about a week and a half. I will be on pins and needles waiting until it gets here! I think curtains made from this fabric will be such an improvement to the laundry room.

Be sure to check out all the other One Room Challenge linking participants by clicking here.