That’s right.. I found the perfect fabric for my Hepplewhite chair!! Remember my chair? Thanks to our dear friend Crystal-Fresh I no longer have to slave away in fabric stores or online for inspiration [not that it's too torturous for me, I live for this stuff.. but anywho..]

That same night when we went over to Crystal’s before our trip I noticed that she had reupholstered her dining chairs in a striking orange accented fabric [see how she did that here].

I just about died when she told me that she had a yard of it left. Perfect! Just enough for my chair! Here’s a closer look at the details of this fabric:

Reasons I love this fabric:

• The juxtaposition of textures – there is a muted linen texture as the background, with a bright bold accent of velour to makeup the pattern. JUST what I was looking for! When you have this kind of balance of materials it really keeps the eye interested so that even if both materials were the same color, they would still act as a pretty bold pattern.
• The scale of the pattern – you usually want to match the scale of the pattern with the size of the piece to which you’re applying the material. Small upolstering = smaller patterns [usually less than an 8" repeat] Larger upholstering = larger patterns [usually having an 8-12" repeat]
• The abstractness of the pattern – I usually stay away from florals or damasks, but since this is just an abstract organic pattern I don’t really have to follow the repeat and can turn it any direction I want. It doesn’t read as “flowers” or “girly” It’s just kind of colorful and random
• The weight – weight is an excellent quality to consider when selecting a fabric. If you can whip it and it pops [like you would a towel in the boys locker room] you know it will last a bunch of sittings AND a ferocious staple gun!

Just as a reminder here is what the chair looked like when I bought it:

And here is how far we’ve come with sanding it down:

When sanding we discovered that under that brown stain, you see in the original picture, there was a much more stubborn super human gunky stain that was actually covering a beautiful cherry wood. After some severe elbow grease we uncovered some beautiful hepplewhite characteristics that I had assumed had just worn off overtime. Nope! They were just burried in goop!

So after a few rounds of sanding and sweating, it’s officially ready to be primed and painted! Woo hoo! Favorite part!! Except for that Derek is apparently a Nazi when it comes to the order of painting and wet sanding and repeating forever, but I know it will be worth it all in the end.

I’ve decided to squash the teal idea and istead paint the body of the chair navy blue! [the second place winner] Why? Because navy looks incredible with this bright of an orange AND it will pull some of the other navy accents around the room. I’m trying to have less random colors and more prominant neutrals like black, grey, navy, and white with pops of the brighter colors. Plus I have plans for my TV stand that would probably be a little much with a teal chair ;) Details soon!

I just folded the fabric in the shape of the cushion to get an idea of how it will end up looking, and I’m pretty excited about the progress :) What do you guys think? Winner winner chicken dinner?

Until next time!

cfs