Recently, the Lifetime Moms Facebook page, or some other similar FB page, had a status update about how it would be nice if "your husband does the laundry once in a while."
Aside from being annoyingly sexist by assuming all families have traditional gender roles (or even that all moms have husbands), it just wasn't true... I HATE it when my husband does the laundry. Mostly because, in my opinion, he does it all wrong. But all other housework, besides laundry and cooking, is actually my husband's domain as he's such a neat freak. Unfortunately that means if I let the laundry sit around for a little too long, my husband's clean freak nerve starts twitching and he gets to washing. Which brings us to today's post.
I love discounted high end bedding, especially the percale weave Ralph Lauren bedding you can often find at TJ Maxx. But I also professed my love for mismatched and shabby chic bedding. Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic line at Target is kind of a perfect blend of the two, except several years ago it was still pricier than the Ralph Lauren bedding at Ross. I think the Target bedding is still a great value, as long as I wait for it to go on clearance or at least on sale.
So it was a big splurge when I bought this amazing coverlet at Target back in, oh, 2005 or so.
Ugh, I love it just as much even today. Target doesn't even carry it anymore, I had to find this picture on eBay. I believe the print is called "ditsy daisy."
Anyway, the splurge was huge because I also bought some pink floral bedding to go with it, which Target amazingly still carries (but not online, so I can't link it). I think I spent something like $80 or $90 for the whole she-bang, which was a big deal because I was in college at the time. My husband and I weren't even married yet.
We used it on our bed with the coordinating sheets just once, when my overzealous clean freak then-boyfriend somehow managed to do this to the coverlet...
The entire thing was bleached out! I still don't know how he managed to do that (I was too broken-hearted to ask at the time), and when I asked him recently how exactly it happened, he had no idea what I was talking about. It had been three moves since he'd seen this blanket, and, after all, it had only looked like it's previous incarnation above for a very short time.
The bleached out version really doesn't look so bad in these pictures; it's almost even kind of appealing. I blame my camera. In real life, it was not. cute.
I'd already planned on dying most of our bedding to coordinate with each other, and knew if I dyed this coverlet a light enough color, the bleached out flowers might still show through.
I usually tend toward pinks, blues, and purples for our room, but I decided to go with yellow after pinning these images:
I love these two images (I think it's the same bedroom snapped with a different camera), and thought the yellow would couple nicely with the orangish hue the flowers on our blanket had become. (I could not find a source for the pictures outside of random Tumblrs and re-blogged pages; if you know who took this pictures please tell me as I prefer giving proper credit where credit is due.)
I went with Rit Dye this time, because I already had some Sunshine Orange on hand, and opted to dye in the washing machine since I was working with such a large piece. I bought a bottle of Lemon Yellow and added the entire thing to the dye bath, and poured in a small amount of the orange. At first, I thought the orange might've been a mistake, but I actually quite like how it turned out.
Granted, it doesn't look so saturated in this collage, but again, I'm blaming the camera. It's a very sweet yellow closer to nacho cheese than to butter in real life, but I like it.
There's a length of blue scallop stitching around the end that not only didn't bleach out, it didn't turn yellow. So, obviously the thread is synthetic. It doesn't really "go", but it's not that noticeable.
The pillowcases in the back are the original pink Rachel Ashwell ones I purchased to go with this coverlet. The front ones are authentic vintage feedsack pillowcases I nabbed from my mom's house-- I usually ask before claiming goods that aren't mine from my parent's house, but these weren't being used and I didn't want them to get ruined, plus I just love them! I think they came with the house when my parents bought it in the 90s. They live in a 1906 farmhouse on an actual ranch, so perhaps these really did hold feed at one time!
