Perfect Pillows

The fabulous fabrics I chose for the great room arrived and were quickly turned into stunning pillows by the Awesome Designer and her workshop. The square checkered pillows ground the more ostentatious rectangular cushions, making the sectional spectacular.


We both feel we should add a third element here - something blue? A touch of gold? We shall see... Feel free to way in with your thoughts!

Big Blue Sectional Reveal

Ta-da! Drum roll please for the stunning reveal of the formerly pink super-sectional sofa


After: Original to the house 1968 Harvey Probber sectional re-upholstered with Kravetsmart in blue chenille by awesome designer Julie Napoleon Brown and her team.


New rug is Chinese Chippendale design by Windsor Smith, also through Kravet, a 9' x 9' square terracotta silk and wool blend with a gold design and border. It's amazing what an appropriately sized rug does for the scale of the room. The sectional floats on the rug just as if it were made to measure.


Before: The sectional in its original rose pink fabric, faded by 40 years of sun streaming through those huge windows (and a little pet-related wear and tear); the too-tiny 5' by 8' rug we'd placed in front of the sofa as a temporary solution five years before. The pillows were hiding a huge split in the seat cushion that had been there for longer than that, which we'd originally covered with reindeer hide! Just out of view is a pink throw covering another hole and more than a few cat claw marks


During the re-covering phase the rug became a patch of carpet cast adrift in a sea of parquet. At this point I knew I had to go rug shopping. I can't say enough good things about the whole rug shopping experience at Kravet - they also have a fun blog Inspired Talk that is, as the name suggests, full of designer tips, resources and drool-worthy photos.


My greatest thanks, however, go to designer Julie Napoleon Brown without whom the project would never have gotten started, let alone turned out so spectacularly. She spent time trying to make an off-center sofa fit more cohesively in a trapezoid room; here she is considering the configuration of the 12-piece sectional


and shown here pondering the choice of pillow fabrics.


She tolerated my control issues as I vetoed swatch after swatch and sample after sample, then had to repeat the process with The Guy, who doesn't respond well to imposed change (unless he is doing the imposing) but in the end, as you can see from the photo, is delighted with the redone great room.


As Julie says, it needs a punch of the orange on the pillows and a few well-chosen accessories, which will come eventually (I can generally sneak one thing past The Guy each quarter), but for the moment - and most importantly - it has been cat tested and fully approved.

More Great Room before and after photos here

Shall we dance?

The pink sectional has gone and we have gained a beautiful waxed parquet floor


Notice the difference from the left side (where the sectional was sitting) to the right - or high traffic area. The unused side has a beautiful rich polish on it which I will redo while the big beast goes from pink to blue.


And while we have this big empty space we can send out the rug for cleaning, move the tables aside and have a sliding competition across the length of the floor... or dance and swirl around to this tune from the master on the wall, M. Jacques Brel

46 yards of fabric

Say good-bye to the big pink sectional. The 12-piece Harvey Probber-designed 1968 chair and ottoman combination that is original to the house is about to get a huge, fabulous makeover. Jacques Brel up there recently got re-framed and has been looking down his nose ever since at the tufts of batting hanging from the torn upholstered corners.


Finally the Awesome Designer decided she I couldn't live with the scratched up, spilt, holey mess it had become and kicked my butt offered to find a suitable fabric and re-upholster it back to its original glory. Over the course of a few weeks she bought me swatches - many, many swatches. She hunted all over the Island and into the City for the right fabric. We started with twenty or so contenders in browns and beiges, pinks, greens and blues - even a plaid


and soon there were more - many, many more - bags of chenilles, stripes and damasks in hundreds of hues. We narrowed down the palette to a range of blues and greens from pewter to denim to seafoam, and the pattern to a simple solid. I asked twitter and facebook pals to vote for their favourite, which helped narrow it down to four front-runners.


There was one fabric, a heavy-duty woven chenille, from the new range of fabrics by Kravet, the Kravetsmart that I loved above all others; it just felt right - soft but really hard-wearing. It's teflon-coated 102,000 double rubs so it should be bullet (or cat) proof.


I had to wait to see all the blue toned swatches but the end I chose the colour I'd always had in mind - a steely-blue that compliments the warm tones of the wood floors, ceiling and beams and the soft shade of the sandstone wall and echoes the bluestone fireplace and patio outside.

And now the fabric- all 46 yards - has arrived, the sectional is awaiting collection and the renovation will soon be underway. In a few weeks I'll be able to reveal the newly upholstered seating area... I can't wait!

Darning the Sofa

The sofa. Gorgeous pink 1968 sectional. Let's get in a little closer, shall we


The damage. This isn't the worst, I couldn't bring myself to show the internets the worst bits that I had to darn to keep the batting in place.




The culprits. Junior cats Maya (top) and Hermes. Butter wouldn't melt, right?

Beautiful Blog Things

A quick round-up of some beautiful blogs I've come across from my stats page or comments I've received via email.


The Rabbit Muse, a blogger from a jewelery maker and potter of pretty things living in upstate New York.


The Upholstery Blog from Heller Furniture, a Massachusetts based custom furniture and design firm.


Andeas Design & Scrapbook På Nätet, Andreas linked to a post I did a while ago on furniture that morphs into a room for 2Modern Design Talk. Unfortunately he linked it to The Cool House and not 2Modern, so I've been getting a lot of traffic from Sweden. If any of them need more information on the Casulo it's here.


Blink Decor's Decorators Dish has a post up about Pochoir Portfolios, a 1920s Moderne French Interiors exhibition at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami. I love anything with Moderne in the title, obviously, but all the posts on the blog are inspiring. Check out this one on interiors from the film “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”.
Enjoy. I'm back to thinking about the vessel sink. The Red and Black is winning by a mile.

Go ahead, lick the screen

via Blinkdecor

French sisters Anouchka and Cassandra Lefebvre De Lange at Le Tramac take antique and vintage furniture and restore and re-upholster it in bright jewel-colored fabrics that just scream "Touch me".

Wow.
These pieces aren't cheap though, the cabinet is approx $2,500. But think what you could do with a junk-yard find, a few basic tools and some bright paint.
Don't they inspire you to take on another project?

BHG re-upholstery guide

Better Homes and gardens have step-by-step instructions on how to re-upholster a slipper chair. With 5 yards of fabric and a few other odds and ends including a camera you can turn



this boring brown chair


into this beautiful blue asset.
There are more how to upholstery guides here