We’ve gotten some great feedback from our Extreme Makeover: Marrero Family Finally and thought we’d take a moment to do some highlights on the rooms you loved the best. The first room we will be focusing on is the walk through living and dining area. As you were able to see in our last write up, yards of our Camel Cotton fabric dressed the front and side windows of this fabulous area of the house. From the time you walk in thru the front door, you are met with an open and airy look and feel. The house itself suddenly seems longer because there are no dividers or walls separating the living, dining or kitchen areas. No obstacles block your walkway, and the same soft flowing material garnishing the windows along the way, create a reserved yet inviting stream of sunlight into an already brightly lit area.
Our White Suede fabric wrapped around the cushioned base and backs of the dining room chairs offer an additional luxury to the dining experience. Don’t let the light color and fabulous look fool you. The fact that it is created with a polyester also makes it very resilient, quick drying, and easy to wash.
The feeling is harmonious and unifying. And with such a big family, the décor of these rooms together is just the right combination for making a house feel like a home. This is a great area not only for living, but entertaining as well. Holidays, football season and big family breakfasts will never be the same when gathering in this welcoming space. Even the Marrero family’s Fen Sui artist friends will find its free flowing layout quietly appealing.
Stay tuned for our second room of choice highlight coming soon!
Not to rip off John Witherspoon's famous saying from the movie Boomerang but, it's true. In order to take something from mediocre to excellent, ya gotta know how to coordinate. Mixing and matching your own fabrics is a fabulous way to express your creativity and personal style. If you struggle with coordinating the right fabrics, we've included a few tips to help you along the way.
Coordinating fabrics in any of your sewing projects is just as important as the actual construction. From our previous blog on Coordinating Fabrics, you'll be happy to know that J&O Fabrics is now working on adding matching coordinates to just about every fabric we carry.
Anyhow, most home decor textile manufacturers come out with new lines each season jam-packed with coordinate collections complete with decorative florals, stripes, supersoft chenille upholstery and more. In any given catalogue, a whole living room will be decked out with a complete set of fabrics to upholster the couch, ottoman, chaise lounge and even make drapes and decorative pillows. All this is excellent! However, not everyone wants a cookie cutter living room, sometimes you may want to mix and match fabrics on your own to suit your own tastes. So. . . you'll need to have some idea on just how to do it.
Firstly, feel free to express yourself and not be shackled by trends. Trends will come and go. Just because everyone matches florals with stripes doesn't mean that you have to. If you follow the reasoning behind why florals match well with stripes, you should be okay matching on your own.
While coordinating, one idea is to create balance with contrast. A straight line will contrast with a circle. Dark will contrast light. A tight structure will contrast with chaos and something large will contrast with something very small.
Here are a few examples of how these ideas manifest themselves on fabric combinations.
Linear to Circular
Busy to Textural (Plain)
Large to Small
Going along with the idea of creating balance by contrast, another way to blend fabrics is to combine HOT with COOL colors. Hot colors include, reds, oranges, yellows etc. And COOL colors include, greens and blues. In a project full of hot warm colors, a cool colored accent may be just the key to creating a perfect balance. Take a look at these examples.
You may also want to consider combining Contrasting Colors. The Contrasting Colors include Blue/Yellow Green/Red Purple/Orange
Overall, texture, color, print, and scale all play a part in how well two fabrics will match. These principles can be explained further in an upcoming blog.
If you follow the above guidelines and focus on creating balance through contrast your coordinating adventures should prove to be both rewarding and a lot of fun!
J&O Fabrics. . . sew many possibilities
If you're in the area, visit our store in Pennsauken, New Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia. The size of a supermarket, we have the largest selection of fabrics in New Jersey! Everything we carry is not on our website, so if you're in the area, check us out and browse our fabric aisles.
J&O Fabric Center 9401 Route 130 South Where Rt.73 and 130 meet Pennsauken, New Jersey 08110 856-663-2121 info@jandofabrics.com
Have you ever looked around your house and thought to yourself……I’d love to give this place a new look, but I don’t want to spend a fortune replacing furniture or flooring? We have five inexpensive and easy ways you can freshen up any room in your house simply by adding fabric!
1. Pillows: Pick out a bright fresh color, you can go with something wild, like an animal print, or more conservative, possibly a toile fabric. Pillows are a fun way to add spice to your room. Remember you are not committed to a certain look, pillows are an easy change. If one day you want blue put out your blue pillows, the next day put out your yellow ones! For this section we would recommend looking in the novelty fabric section along with the upholstery fabric and decorative fabric sections.
2. Seat covers: This is the best and easiest way to freshen up your dinning room or kitchen. Take the seat off of your dining/kitchen chairs and staple your new fabric around the bottom of the seat…..and like magic, you have new chairs! You can go with an ultra suede, or maybe an upholstery fabric that blends with your décor. 3/4 of a yard will cover 2 seats. 2 1/4 yards will be enough for 6 seats. We recommended any fabric in the Upholstery fabric section or Decorative fabric section.
3. Window swag: This one is so simple. Just pick out a fun or colorful fabric. Go to your local hardware store, even Target will do. Get 2 hooks, one for each side of the window. Once the hooks are up just drape the fabric from hook to hook and now you have just added a little flare to your window. We recommended sheer fabric, but chiffon is also a nice inexpensive cloth that has an elegant look and feel.
4. Window Shades: This is my favorite. Go to your local hardware store and purchase blackout shades (approx $5.00 per window) and they normally cut to size. Pick out a fabric of your choice and then glue the fabric onto the blackout shade. Now you have custom shades that would normally cost hundreds of dollars. Any of our novelty fabric would be fun along with the upholstery and designer fabrics.
5. Wall hanging: Simply pick your favorite fabric and staple it around a wooden frame that you can purchase at any craft store. This is an easy and low cost way to add artwork to your walls. Recommended fabrics: anything goes in this category. If you want to go a little wild, check out the retro fabrics or you can even go with tropical fabric.
Stay tuned for our future blogs for step-by-step instructions on how to create each of the five home décor fabric projects!
J & O Fabrics is a leader in online fabric stores with hundreds of discount fabrics including: upholstery, quilt, quilting, drapery fabric, fleece, decorator, felt, retro, upholstery fabrics and more!
We’ve gotten some great feedback from our Extreme Makeover: Marrero Family Finally and thought we’d take a moment to do some highlights on the rooms you loved the best.
Our White Suede fabric wrapped around the cushioned base and backs of the dining room chairs offer an additional luxury to the dining experience. Don’t let the light color and fabulous look fool you. The fact that it is created with a polyester also makes it very resilient, quick drying, and easy to wash. 
