good navy is hard to find…or…making things

eloquent 2965c by Carolyn Rebuffel DesignsAs an interior designer, the best parts of my job are the parts that include making something.  Designing the perfect room and figuring out all the pieces of the puzzle always gets me energized.  Along the way, while designing a custom piece or putting together a set of pillows or fashioning the perfect window treatment design, it is always a challenge to find the piece that satisfies the image in my head. 

This time around, the search was for the perfect set of navy fabrics for a family room.  The room needed a big sectional sofa for a family of six with lots of pillows that coordinated well with the navy velvet upholstery.  Durability was a key factor in choosing great fabrics.   And apparently, the perfect  grouping of navy patterns was becoming my personal Odyssey.  I could not find the pre-existing patterns that matched the idea in my head. 

And then my daughter got sick and I had a lot of time on my hands keeping her home from school.  My assistant was handling all the project details and the office was running smoothly; all of the sudden I had time and space to create something unique.  My own line of fabrics.  The following are the ingredients necessary to make this project fly.

Ingredients:

1 cup amazing assistant designer

3 cups time

2 cups frustration at finding exactly what I wanted

2 cups fabric printer

1 cup amazing technology available on the internet

1 cup pantone color guide

1 cup graphic designer friend to coach me on the tricky bits

wavy 2965c by Carolyn Rebuffel DesignsI am at the beginning of this endeavor; preliminary designs have been created and now I am working on perfect coloring. Each fabric takes the printing ink differently and the colors on my screen never exactly match the end result.  (If you have ever taken a paint swatch home and then painted the room that swatch color and been surprised by the result, you have an inkling of how this might be tricky.)  So it is a work in progress.  The most exciting part of this is the ability to design exactly what I want, in exactly the colors I want and give projects that added boost of creativity, making the end result truly unique. 

Stay tuned!