Textiles tie it all together

Happy Monday!

It's so fun coming back to design-blog-land at the beginning of the week to see what kinds of projects people got up to over the weekend. Looking forward to seeing what Danika came up with for her kitchen countertops--faux marble or no? As for me, I may have cracked the color code in my living room.

Usually, when starting in on a room, I need to start with the busiest, most colorful element, which for me is generally the rug or a textile, and pull my other colors, patterns, and textures from there. I'm sure lots of people work this way (and others probably have better methods, but it works for me.)

In our current house, the dining room's teal and chartreuse scheme built from this rug

The guest room's navy and raspberry scheme came from this rug


The girls' room is completely built around this fabric


And the master bedroom started with this duvet.


Oh, but what about the living room?

It has taken a while for the living room to click, especially when the new loveseat changed the vibe for me and I had to shake loose the old vision in my head to make way for something new. Over the weekend, I refined the color palette a little bit with some minor editing (and some new lamps!), and then realized that part of my problem was that I was working backwards from my normal methodology. I already had my furniture, my art, my rug, and while each thing related to at least one other thing in the room, I didn't have the one piece that tied it all together.

I needed my textile.

It needed to fit with the Moroccan tile pattern of the rug, the mid-century furniture, and the 70s art. Already a tall order, if you ask me! It also, I realized, needed to have green and raspberry and, ideally, blue, orange, and brown. Whoa. That's some funky jewel tone magic happening there, not my normal thing.

I figured ikat was my best bet. It's ethnic enough for the Moroccan-inspired rug (and a different pattern scale), timeless enough for the retro stuff, and colorful enough for the crazy combo of hues I've got going on in here. Many searches later, and I found this throw pillow, from an etsy seller I have actually bought from in the past.

And I could just go ahead and buy this pillow from her. But that might be too easy. Also, I figured that if I could track down the fabric, I could make a pair of pillows for the same cost, or less. Well. Guess what? My awesome sister-in-law Maud, of Union Place in Excelsior, found the fabric at Duralee. So my options open up.

How about going beyond pillow, like recovering a pair of lampshades??? I love this post about customizing lampshades, at Isabella and Max Rooms. What do you think? lampshades on these new green lamps,


Or the old brassy ones?


The green lamps need a little change up on the old silver bases, and the brass lamps could get sprayed something more in the black family. OR the throw pillow(s) on the brown couch. I'm taking votes. Democracy in action.

Just kidding. I guess it's a sensitive time to be flippant about democracy, what with the turmoil in Libya and the rest of the Middle East. But I do still want opinions.

What say you?