I have been working on this yellow room project now for over six months and I am finally glad to finish it! This room is fairly small but has just enough room for two twin beds. For the past eight years it has had two mismatched quilts on it that, although cute, were not my vision for the room. I really wanted the room's color scheme to be yellow, red and white.
So one day when I was at Calico Corner's I found two fabrics that I loved - one with yellow stripes and one with red. I just couldn't decide. The red-striped fabric is part of Calico's French Stripes Collection and has a wonderful texture and as they describe it a "French laundry look." And the yellow fabric has a beautiful, textural stripe and was on clearance for only $8/yard! So in typical Nessy fashion I decided in that moment to make four duvet covers! (I knew it was insane at the time, but I just couldn't let either fabric go!) So six months (and many, many curse words) later I have four new duvet covers - two for summer and two for winter!
Originally I thought, "How hard can it be?" All you have to do is sew two rectangles together that are the same size as your duvet." So I headed over to IKEA's website and designed the whole duvet cover around their 64'' wide by 86'' long duvet. Theoretically all you have to do is add 2 inches to the width and 5 inches to the length which gives you a 1 inch seam allowance and enough fabric for a roll over button hole area. But it did become a bit more complicated because I had to piece together three pieces for each duvet. If anyone is really interested, send me an email and I will send you the exact dimensions I used.
Looking back, I probably bit off a bit more than I could chew, but that is just my nature. I did learn a ton from this project. I now know how to sew button holes like a champ and I learned how to sew buttons on with the sewing machine. (If you have never done this it is totally amazing! I will never sew another button by hand.) I also learned that one really should change out the needle in one's sewing machine fairly often. I also had to pace myself on this project which I hate to do. But in the end it was worth it. Now all I need are some guests who are willing to sleep on twin beds!
2 comments:
Beautiful room! I found this blog by searching homemade duvet covers. It's a project I'm thinking about tackeling since I can't seem to find any bedding that I like. I would be curious of your demensions used, esp if you have them in King size :)
Stacey,
Thank you for the nice comment. I don't have the dimensions for a King size, but if you add 2 inches to your duvet width and 5 inches to the length that will give you a one inch seam allowance. At the top I folded the fabric over 1.75 inches to give a nice area for the buttons, plus .5 inches to turn under (thus, 1.75 + 1.75 + .5 = 4 inches). Then I added 1 inch for the bottom seam opposite the opening. That's how I came up with 5 extra inches vertically. If you are making a king you will likely have to piece it together, so add 5 inches to the top piece. Hopefully this was helpful.
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