Tag Archives: yellow

The Guest Room – Part 5

Let’s recap. We bought our house in 2006. It was built in 1978. Prior to our taking ownership, I don’t think very much had been changed. I did discover a second layer of vinyl flooring when I did the entry. And we suspect the windows were replaced at some point, although they could stand it again. But other than that, probably not much.

It has taken me until this year to finally get to the guest room. The very first room we did was M’s bedroom. She was in her Junior year of high school, and we knew she wouldn’t be living with us much longer, so we wanted to make sure she was comfortable for the time she was here.

So back to the guest room…it had burnt orange carpet with bleach stains. It had the same delightful brown “woodwork” – and I use that term loosely – as the hallway, and it had cream walls. Now, while there is nothing wrong with cream walls if they have a striking baseboard and window frame to spice them up, this certainly didn’t. Here are a few pictures to remind you what it started out looking like. Continue reading…

The Guest Room – part 4

We’re in the home stretch. When I left off, the room was stripped down to the bones, but there was no color yet. Now there is color.

Continue reading…

The Guest Room – part 2

Ta Da! The curtains are done. The rod gave me fits though. After I finished the curtains, I hung them on the rod and, while arranging the folds, gave it a bit too much of a tug. And pulled one entire support out of the wall. Four days later, after much spackle and sanding, I put it up again. But since I was impatient to show it to you, I put it in the same place I’d just patched. Brilliant. So it stayed up long enough to post the pictures but that’s about it. I’m going to move the brackets out an inch, but I promise not to bore you with those details. In the meantime, here’s how I got the curtains done… Continue reading…

Yellow & Gray Quilt – part 3

I’ve been plugging along on the quilt for our guest bedroom. Life has intervened somewhat – big surprise – and my quilting space, as wonderful as it is, is a little small to lay out all the squares, even on the floor. I tried moving over to D—’s side of the basement, but he has guitars, drums, mic stands, you name it over there. And I could still only find room to lay out about half of it.

IMG_5908 IMG_5907 Continure reading…

Yellow & Gray Quilt – part 2

One week later…I have all my fabrics cut. It’s likely I will discover I have either too many or too few of some. IMG_5161There were templates to use for the pattern pieces, but I’m not a fan of templates unless I have no alternative. So I measured them and laid them out on the back of my gridded rulers.IMG_5648

The trapezoids were a little trickier. I cut strips of yellows and whites at 2 3/4″ and then cut the trapezoids from that. This ruler is a 12 1/2″ square. Very versatile.IMG_5649

After I had cut all the blacks, I realized that while the pattern in the book was square, the pattern I designed was on point. Hmmm. Continue reading…

Yellow & Gray Quilt – part 1

My husband and I have lived in our home about 7 years now. In that time, we have remodeled the kitchen/family room, living room, dining room, sunporch, and basement. The only room untouched on the first floor is the half bath. But we’ll get to that later.

The only room on the second floor that has been done is my step-daughter’s room. We wanted to make sure she was comfortable first as she wouldn’t be living with us that much longer. She was a junior in high school at the time and would be leaving for college soon.

This is all a very long way of saying that I am finally getting to the guest room. My husband took the lovely wood duck wallpaper border off years ago, but that’s as far as we got. I’ve decided to do the whole room in yellows, grays, and whites. Me being me, I am starting with the quilt. It will take the longest time.

My usual modus operandi (can you tell I’m an avid mystery reader?) for designing a quilt is to pick the fabrics first.

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Whites

I will likely not use all the fabrics I’m showing here, but you never know. Because I also like the scrappy look of lots of different fabrics.

Grays

Grays

The one on the bottom of the gray group has bits of yellow in it too. It’s sort of hard to see in this picture. Hopefully, the wild pattern won’t be too distracting and will simply hold the colors together.

Yellows

Yellows

The fabric on the top of the yellow group is leftovers from  the backing on Lightship (see Quilt Sampler). The walls in the room will be painted yellow, so the overall look of the quilt will dictate which paint I end up with.

Blacks

Blacks

Blacks are included to give it a little punch and definition. I went through lots of books and catalogs to get my inspiration for the design. I settled on a fairly basic pattern that I liked online before going through my books. The pattern I chose is from Kaffe Fassett’s Glorious Patchwork. The book was a gift from my cousin Sascha almost 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. But that’s another story.

Fassett’s designs aren’t all that complicated, but his colors choices are something else!

My design on the left. Kaffe Fassett's on the right.

My design on the left. Kaffe Fassett’s on the right.

If you look carefully at these, you can see that they are almost the same thing. The only change I will be making to mine is to split each patch to match the shading of the one from the book. This is why I needed a black.  The squares that are gray on my design will be the pyramid shape in the middle.

Next step is to calculate how many of each color I need to cut and go at it. There are templates in the back of the book, so I won’t have to draw that part.

But for today, I am painting the “woodwork” in my upstairs hall. I use the term woodwork loosely, because it’s all that hollow core stuff. Practically pressed paper. Anyway, it’s all a hideous shade of dark walnut now. And I’m just not happy unless I’m doing 4 things at once. So look for the cut pieces of quilt in about a week!