Girl's Dream Bedroom - Duvet Meets Rag Quilt

Yesterday I took a trip, with kids in tow, to visit my friend Tamey at Aunt Tam's. As a side benefit I hoped to find a fabric for the Girl's Dream Bedroom duvet. (It's summer and combining tasks is a must if anything is going to get done!)

It was great to see everyone at the store, but unfortunately I didn't find the perfect duvet fabric to coordinate with the drapery panels in the room. (Made from Calico Corners Lock fabric in Hot Pink.) On the drive home, Isabella and I were expressing our disappointment when suddenly we both shifted our thoughts and started talking about the really cool quilt we had seen at the store.

Made of several Amy Butler fabrics, the quilt was sewn up of squares backed with flannel, seams facing out and frayed! The next thing we knew we were brainstorming about how we could do something like this on the duvet, what fabrics we could use and what a great project this would be to work on while at the beach in a couple weeks. Yeah!

So, after a late lunch and some time playing with the dog, we added another outing to our day and stopped by Calico Corners. I was fairly certain a couple fabrics I had seen there would be perfect for the revised duvet design.

After looking around to make sure Isabella didn't like anything else better, we ordered these two fabrics, Aviary Robin by Thomas Paul and Lock in Splash. When I asked the salesperson to make a suggestion for a solid fabric to back the duvet, explaining our plan to cut up the fabrics in squares, add flannel with seams facing out to fray...she looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I could virtually read her thoughts, "You are ordering perfectly beautiful fabric so that you can cut it into pieces...add Flannel...to Fray?! Do you have any sense at all?!"

I hope I do. It will be an interesting hybrid of the functional duvet meeting a funky quilt. The colors are perfect, the patterns mix well with the drapery pattern and the technique will add a dose of texture and fun to the room.

But best of all, Isabella is excited to work on the project with me, so that already makes it a success!