My Pinterest Challenge FAIL

So way back on October 30th I participated in the Young House Love/Bower Power/Our Fifth House/Ugly Duckling Pinterest Challenge. I mentioned in my post on Embroidered Quotes  that it was a back up project because my first project was a bust. I also mentioned I'd be back to detail my road to epic failure. The next day. Which would've been October 31st. It's December 4th. Ahem.

ANYHOW. My original plan was to make a soft white window shade for our living room.

Photo Courtesy of Houzz

This was my inspiration image. Instead of a little square of floral fabric, I wanted to do something inspired by vintage barkcloth with its boomerangs, atomic references, and other Googie shapes.

Picture From Retro Renovation

Picture From Etsy

Instead of heavy, solid colors I kept it light by only outlining the shape. For the fabric, I wanted something nice with a little bit of weight but that would still allow light. So I went thrifting, looking for a good-sized white tablecloth. I found several at Goodwill, including two for under a $1. They had both a large oval and a large rectangle. I obviously needed the rectangle tablecloth.

My embroidery adventures usually involve iron on patterns, where I iron said pattern onto my textile with the help of a ruler, level, and pencil to make sure everything is properly placed. This project needed a looser feel, so I embarked on the adventure of freestyle embroidery.

Some starbursts. What's up with the lighting of this shot? I don't know what I did differently!

Shapes inside of shapes.

Boomerangs! 

More shapes begetting shapes fun.

I really, really enjoyed it. So there I am, getting my freestyle on, when I decided to match up the corners to make sure I distributed the figures evenly. Umm...that's when I realized I'd made a mistake.

See the problem?

I quickly realized I hadn't bought the cheap, white, nice RECTANGLE tablecloth. No, I somehow managed to buy the oval one. I...don't even know. So I proceeded to have quite the little hissy, then got myself together, posted my other project for the challenge, folded this up in my sewing basket and snarled every time I thought about it.

The wrinkles are proof of the bundling into the sewing basket.

After a little reconsideration, I thought I might be able to make it work somewhere else so I pulled it out and placed it on my dining table. My really, really huge dining table. I swear I think we could use it as the base for a double bed. The table cloth is also pretty massive; now I'm thinking maybe I could make it work after all. If I used clip-on curtain hooks? Maybe the rounded edges would just create a kind of waterfall effect? Maybe? I think I'll try a cheap pack and try it out...

What about you guys? Have you ever rescued a project you thought was an epic fail?

This post was featured on Homemade Ginger!

Making Mistakes

Picking paint colors is hard. Very hard. Way harder than it looks. My first post about the living room referred to the slight battle over color palate that occurred in Chez JTE. Blue-gray, said Tracie. Saturated bold color, said J. (Okay, really he said "I want it cozy! Like a cave!)

Our solution was to grab every paint chip that slightly appealed to either of us. After taping a few to the walls, I conceded that J might-might-have a point. Our little home is light filled...except for the living/dining room. The lovely double window actually gets very little light because of the porch roof over it. Add in the window treatments (a term I despise) needed for privacy (lots of tourists on our street who probably don't want to see The T&J Show when they walk past) and the room loses even more light. The light colors I favored looked dingy and dull in our natural light starved room, while Jeremy's dark colors made it look moody, sophisticated purposeful.

Picture from Desire to Inspire

Looking at pictures like this one tilted me towards the dark and dramatic side.

True confession, I despise our dark leather sofa. It came with my husband, whom I do love, so I put it up with it. I love how in the dark walls absorb the dark sofa and make the whole room look so well thought out and sophisticated.

I also fell for this picture.

From here

It's just so dramatic and rich looking.

So off we went to Home Depot, where we picked up a tester of Martha Stewart's Chocolate Truffle. Oh. My. God.

This is the sample. Yes, it looked this bad. No, actually, it looked worse. Why did I take the picture from that insane angle? No idea. The paint transformed our living space into where light came to die. And instead of absorbing the sofa...it was like the sofa won! It took over my entire living room.

We lived with it for awhile, as J at first wanted to defend its qualities (cavelike doesn't, really, qualify as a plus, bless his heart). At the end, he had to admit it wasn't working. So we primed over the chocolate splotches (lesson learned, paint on poster board from now on). It took awhile and some more samples but we finally settled on Martha Stewart's Burlap colormatched to Sherwin Williams.

We paid for our own paint and have no affiliation with Sherwin Williams, so this is a totally unbiased review, but I loved this paint! It was so creamy and we had no drips. Zero. Nada. And the coverage, considering old walls and fairly deep color, was amazing. I can't recommended it enough. Loved it. Looking forward to their next sale so we can buy some more paint!

This is still a fairly deep color, but it looks fantastic with our dark brown leather sofa. It's exactly what I wanted chocolate truffle to do.

So picking paint colors...sometimes the second time is the charm.