We get bored easily. This keeps us in a more or less perpetual state of changing our decor, or at least wanting to. Our house in Maine was a Craftsman-inspired cottage and we decorated the porch accordingly in terms of color: earthy greens and reds with cream and brown. See the photos below.
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| Our Kennebunkport house © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
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| Screen Porch © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
Those pillows on the floor functioned as dog beds :)
When we moved to North Carolina, we ended up in a Craftsman-inspired home once again, and once again, the color scheme of the exterior was "earthy". Sorry about not sharing a photo of the screen porch there, but we never got around to taking pictures before moving out.
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| Our first home in North Carolina © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
Fast forward to Quince Cottage, the place we now call home. Boy, were we ready for a change! We went in pretty much the complete opposite direction with a creamy exterior accented with soft blue and white.
Now, I don't know if you've ever purchased new pillows for a Lloyd Flanders sofa, but let me tell you, they're not cheap. Moreover, there was nothing actually wrong with our cushions, aside from their fabric covering, so the obvious solution was to recover them (along with the existing toss pillows).
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| Quince Cottage © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
Quince Cottage Confession No. 2
I loathe, loathe, loathe sewing, and I'm really not very good at it. As a result, I did the simple toss pillow covers weeks before I finally tackled the more complicated box pillow covers. In fact, I'm so "not good" at sewing that this post is NOT in any way a tutorial/DIY thing.
Here are my only tips: announce a disclaimer before you even start (as in, "these covers are going to be FAR from perfect, in fact they might look somewhat sucky"), second, do your best to hide the really ugly stuff in the back of the pillow (like how you deal with fasteners etc.), and finally, throws can hide a goof-up under the pretense of providing coziness on a chilly evening. I'm still looking for a pretty throw to cover up that pillow cover on the far left of the sofa, where the stripes didn't line up and the seam puckered...
Here are my only tips: announce a disclaimer before you even start (as in, "these covers are going to be FAR from perfect, in fact they might look somewhat sucky"), second, do your best to hide the really ugly stuff in the back of the pillow (like how you deal with fasteners etc.), and finally, throws can hide a goof-up under the pretense of providing coziness on a chilly evening. I'm still looking for a pretty throw to cover up that pillow cover on the far left of the sofa, where the stripes didn't line up and the seam puckered...
But, without further ado, here are some photos, and you'll notice we used two different fabrics on some pillows. Two looks for the price (and work) of one!
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| Look #1 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
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| Look #2 © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
And here's the sofa, those two large pillows (yep, they're bed pillows) in the middle can each be reversed so you can have two navy blue, two rose, or one of each.
We found the floral fabrics on the "leftovers" table and in the clearance section at The Mill Outlet Village in Raleigh. They have fabulous stuff there, AND they're really nice. The striped fabric we found on clearance at Ballard's Designs online.
Oh, one more thing, if you're not using Sunbrella material, then take the extra step of spraying on Scotchgard™ water-repellent to help stave off mold and mildew when the weather gets hot and humid as it does around here. If you live in Arizona or some place like that, you can probably skip it.
Be sure to spray it on outdoors and not near any surfaces that shouldn't be made water-repellent. Why yes, that is a different sofa - you're so observant! That's the one on our front porch and we'll be talking more about that one in an upcoming post about curb appeal.
Happy Memorial Day to all of you! We hope you get to spend some time taking it easy this weekend, like Buster here. We all love porch life here at Quince Cottage.
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| © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
We found the floral fabrics on the "leftovers" table and in the clearance section at The Mill Outlet Village in Raleigh. They have fabulous stuff there, AND they're really nice. The striped fabric we found on clearance at Ballard's Designs online.
Oh, one more thing, if you're not using Sunbrella material, then take the extra step of spraying on Scotchgard™ water-repellent to help stave off mold and mildew when the weather gets hot and humid as it does around here. If you live in Arizona or some place like that, you can probably skip it.
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| © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
Be sure to spray it on outdoors and not near any surfaces that shouldn't be made water-repellent. Why yes, that is a different sofa - you're so observant! That's the one on our front porch and we'll be talking more about that one in an upcoming post about curb appeal.
Happy Memorial Day to all of you! We hope you get to spend some time taking it easy this weekend, like Buster here. We all love porch life here at Quince Cottage.
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| Buster © Rhiann Wynn-Nolet |
So beautiful. I never saw these pictures before.
ReplyDeleteThank you! We all love spending time on the porch - except when it's blazing hot or freezing cold :)
ReplyDelete