Morning you inquisitive walrus! Walruses? Walri? What does one call a pack of walrus?

As promised I’m back today with barely a post at all. In keeping with my copy-the-chain store thing I kicked off with yesterday’s Anthro post, today I’m back showing off my haul of ‘novelty’ ticking that I got from Hancock the other day! And what I plan to do with it…

This all started with the arrival of the fall catalog from Restoration Hardware. Does anyone else get that catalog? We bought the hardware for our kitchen cabinets there, so we get the catalogs, but for the most part that is a store to which I never venture. For one thing the closest one is in the snooty mall in the snooty suburb close to my house – you know the type. Lots of  ‘arty’ boutiques and high end paper shops and that kind of thing.

Anyway, I was flipping through the catalog and saw this bedding set, which caused great lust within my heart.

{restoration hardware | Belgian linen Provence stripe bedcover}

Isn’t that lovely? I don’t pay all that much attention to our decor – an occasional obsessive redo of a room, but other than that I’m happy with the status quo. So happy, in fact, that I never even bothered to finish the white denim slipcovers that I started for our bed. I mean, honestly. Our bed has looked like this for almost two years – white headboard, brown sides and foot…

You can see why that Restoration Hardware bedding appealed to me, though can’t you? Not that there’s anything really wrong with our bedding . Other than the 3 tubes of brick red lipstick Lucy the hound has brought to bed with her. Silly hound.

Unfortunately, just the duvet cover from Restoration would be out of my comfort zone, spending wise. At nearly $200, it’s just too much! But look what I came across the other day at Hancock!!

OK – just the pretend-ticking is from Hancock. I already had the creamy crocheted trim and the muslin. The ticking-like stuff is a poly/rayon blend with a very nice weight to make a duvet cover – and it was in the $2.95 value section! The nice lady at the store even hunted down a current coupon so I could get 40% off the price, so I bought the whole bolt – about nine yards.

I wasn’t sure how much fabric I needed for a duvet, so I checked out the Kwik Sew catalog before buying the fabric. Kwik Sew has a lot of home decor patterns, so I was sure I could find something duvet-like and at least read the fabric recommendations. Lo and behold, they had the perfect pattern for what I have in mind! Even though I love the ticking, it’s a bit much for a whole duvet – all those stripes! I was thinking of just using panels on the side, with muslin in the middle. Maybe some of that waffle-weave stuff. Here’s the Kwik sew pattern – I thought it was so great I BOUGHT IT!! Yup – I bought a pattern to make what is ultimately two pieces of square fabric sewn together…

{Kwik Sew 3356}

Here’s the tech drawing – I’m after view B.

As a side note, I was catching up on my blog reading, and I came across this wonderful little piece of craftsmanship on the quilting blog a cuppa and a catch up. This block is inspired by boro quilts, something new to me, but from what I understand, these are a sort of traditional Japanese method of using scraps and worn out textiles. Whatevs. I think it looks cool, although I’m not a huge fan of all the blue in a lot of the boro quilts google searches bring up. I’d love to work this look into a new bedding textiles. Of course, I could just ‘scrap’ it (hahahahahaha) and buy my own boro quilt from Anthropologie…

{a cuppa and a catch up}

Alright! That’s it! New fabric, more inspiration for a project I will get to at some unspecified time in the future. My Jasmine blouse remains untouched (at least it’s hanging, so the bias and relax.) Last night I wanted to hang out in the basement while Mr. Bug organized for the imminent arrival of our new freezer, so I finally printed out the entire Jenny skirt pattern and then graded it up.

Oh! And I DID say that the rest of the week’s blogging would be Lucy photos. Here she is crashing my fabric photo session yesterday…