Ikat You Can Afford

Urban Outfitters has a great looking Ikat chair at a very affordable price.

Urban Outfitters Ikat Slipper Chair - Only $325. HERE

Ikat is here to stay. The bright bold graphic print just seems to work on antique furniture frames, on pillows, and on contemporary furniture. It's just the needed punch of bold color that often bridges your old things into the realm of the new and refreshed.

Urban Outfitters Ikat Slipper Chair - only $325. HERE

Contemporary Ikat fabric is not cheap, ranging from $50. a yard, and up from a variety of fabric houses, to well over $200. per yard from Madeline Weinrib who does the best interpretation of it.

Madeline Weinrib fabric on a 19th century frame - over $3000.

You can find affordable Ikat fabric direct from the source from a place called Uzbek Craft for less than $20. per piece, but you have to buy several pieces to cover a chair. They also have very well priced pillow covers. And Uzbek Craft has a great selection of that other beloved textile, the Suzani!

Do what Jefferey Bilhuber does - just add a little Ikat pillow toss

Material Girls has a great roundup on the subject HERE, and it's well worth taking a look.

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Decorating With Pairs - Do The Autumn Shuffle

I flipped out this morning!

A change of season, means at least the furniture gets rearranged, though at this point I have exhausted all the options in my teeny living room! So I just sort of flip flop the sofa and the settee, along with a couple of tables. I also move the art around a bit, and edit the accessories.

Before the flip!

The top photo is now, the bottom photo before the Autumn shuffle

However this is the latest (and I think last) upgrade to the living room. The Big Girl Drapes were just added in here. I did the bedrooms and my office HERE all in silk, all lined beautifully with thermo-suede, so it was only a matter a time before I would add the living room to this luscious collection.

The new drapes! Marilyn and I love them!

The color is in the same family as the old drapes, a distressed Fortuny style poison green velvet that I had for nearly ten years.

Last year

Sans drapes - the Summer look I just changed

The new drape color is a chartreuse, shot with threads of purple. It has in iridescent quality, sort of like a man's silk sharkskin suit.



The color changes with the light. It is absolutely wonderful!


This shade of green has been a signature color of mine for years. I never get tired of it.
The drape s are a perfect addition for the Fall season. The green reminds me of a color of leaf that I see in Autumn.


It's not just about bright reds and yellows and oranges. There's a bright green leaf that appears too.



But speaking of red, I also added another pair of something in my office!


I had one of the turquoise lamps for my desk , and I got another one (from perch.). I like the pair of lamps on the desk. I'm a bit of pair queen. The symmetry of pairs calms my lively decor! At least that's the story I'm sticking to!. The shades are custom from perch. They're silk and just so luxe. I love the floral pattern.



I also added a white cow hide rug. I have had the brown and white hide rug for over a year now, and I find it the easiest thing to care for. Dirt and dog hair simply do not appear, and it is so easy when I rarely have to vacuum it. So I acquired the white hide from Argentina for my office. I think it adds a bit of warmth for the Fall, and coming Winter months.


A young woman came into the shop and picked up a pair of plates, and then put one back saying she was told she has too many pairs of things, and she's trying to reform. I laughed and asked if the decor police had been snooping around her house. I told her that each of us is attracted to the same things over and over for a reason, the reason being that those choices can be depended upon to make us feel in sync, to make us feel good. She bought one plate, but came back the next for the second one.

Click on images for larger views

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I Heart Fabric.com

Fabric.com is a great resource. They have the most reasonably priced fabric, much of it on trend.
Even though I work at a wonderful home furnishing store with access to every designer fabric, I often cannot afford it even if I can get it at cost.
And sometimes I have a client who is on a very tight budget, and I need to find great looking designer fabric really really inexpensively.
Fabric.com is my go-to source.
The customer service is great. There is free shipping if your order is $35. or more.
I have personally used their ivory burlap for drapes, their heavy white cotton for slipcovers, their solid color silk and linen for drapes, their lining and interlining.
When trends first break, prices are high, and it make take a year or two for them to trickle down to the mainstream. If you aren't stuck-up about a designer name, and you can use your creativity to get the gesture of what you see in a magazine, Fabric.com will be a wonderful resource for you.

Fabric trends

Here is a round up of some of my favorite fabrics at Fabric.com based on looks you all once drooled over. I for one, still appreciate them.

One hot fabric is the Lee Jofa Confetti Dot designed by Kelly Wearstler. Lots of you drooled over this, and I have used it for clients. But it hovers around $100. a yard or more.

Lee Jofa Confetti Dot

Fabric.com has something in the same vein, and in many different color ways (gray, orange, black).

Fabric.com Togo print HERE

The very talented Nicole Cohen from Sketch42 used the Lee Jofa fabric in her home.

She added the beautiful trim, no doubt from her family's fabulous store M & J Trimming in New York. I found some very cute zebra print ribbon at Fabric.com for only $1.24 a yard that would work just fine for a girl on a budget.

Zebra print ribbon from HERE

Skirted console by Nicole Cohen

Madeline Weinrib has some of the best Ikat fabrics, but they are very pricey. I wish I could afford them!

Fabric.com has some prints that really have the feeling of some of the Weinrib dot Ikats.

This dot Ikat-like fabric comes in pink, orange, black, yellow HERE

Madeline Weinrib Ikat pillow around $400.

Of course Fabric.com has Suzani too. Again in many color ways HERE
This black and white one really looks like a Weinrib Suzani.

Black and white Suzani HERE $6.98 per yard!

Madeline Weinrib Suzani chair

There's been alot of flak about trellis like fabrics, but again I still think they are very cute.

Trellis print on Lucite stool

Trellis print from Fabric.com HERE
It comes in so many colors!

Another trellis style print HERE

Greek key style fabrics are fabulous. We all loved what Jonathan Adler did with them.

Jonathan Adler stool

Maybe you have a chair seat or a little stool that you can recover.

Fabric.com has this Waverly Cross Section fabric in several colors HERE

For all you black and white lovers, there is a huge selection of black and white designer style fabrics available. And you have to remember that all these fabrics start at $6.98 a yard and go no higher than $12.- $15. per yard!

Trellis style print drapes

I just ordered a yard of this black and white fabric to cover a couple of Saarinen stools.

Get this fabric HERE - $10.98 a yard!
It reminds me of Windsor Smith

The chevron pattern is great, and beloved by many of us.

Chevron print drapes

Chevron fabric HERE
Again it comes in many color ways

And if you want the carpet to match the drapes ha ha, get over to La Dolce Vita to see these very affordable Flor carpet tiles(!!!!), and enter a giveaway to win a rug! HERE

And some more Ikat - I think this one is as beautiful as any Weinrib fabric. I love the painterly quality of it.

Blue Ikat from Fabric.com HERE

Blue Ikat furniture is so pretty

Have you ever used laminated fabric? It was a big thing to cover dining room chairs in laminated chintz in the 1980's.

Fabric.com has quite a few good looking laminated fabrics that would be wonderful for chairs.

Laminated fabric HERE
It reminds me of Trina Turk

Trina Turk fabric on a chair from perch.

I also love a link pattern.

Links from Fabric.com $12.98 per yard HERE


Windsor Smith links print fabric from Kravet about $150. per yard
See a great DIY project from Nest Egg HERE

Here are just a few images to remind you of how great print fabrics and wallpaper are.



And the use of color is pretty great too.


This images are of the Redbury Hotel.


Hope you can use Fabric.com for a source to get great inexpensive designer style fabrics!

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Melissa Rufty And My Ikat Pillows

I love Melissa Rufty's work. She elevates the traditional with her own expressive use of color and fabrics and wallpaper.

Melissa Rufty uses Ikat pillows

I was doing some photo research for a post on here HERE.

Melissa Rufty has a terrific editorial featuring her home, in the October 2010 issue of House Beautiful. And while I was gathering images I saw these Ikat pillows, and had an OMG moment.

Visual Vamp living room at the very very beginning
Check out the Ikat pillows!

I purchased these pillows on layaway at perch. long before I worked there, and long before I knew who the fabulous Melissa Rufty is.

I've moved those Ikat pillows around alot

Melissa stops in perch., and we like her so much. The last time she came by, we were all squealing like school girls over Sandra Bullock shopping on Magazine Street.

Visual Vamp living room now
So much has changed! But I still have those Ikat pillows!

So much has changed for me in the last couple of years. I'm back at work in the design world, and loving every minute of it. I've met so many wonderful people because of blogging and working at perch. And I still have those first Ikat pillows I bought!

Melissa Rufty in October 2010 issue of House Beautiful
She changed the pillows!

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