Perfect Bedding

I have been wanting to do this blog post for a while, because this project started back in October over General Conference weekend, picked back up over Christmas break until I got what I thought was a wicked case of the flu (good thing it was something totally better :) and was finished over conference weekend this April.  I know, I know, leave it to me to drag a 6 hour project out to 6 months.  Anyhow, I did finish it and am quite happy.
The duvet cover was a design I saw in Garnet Hill and just fell in love with.  I sent it to my mom, mentioning that I thougth we could make this, and if she ever saw any fabric like this in one of the two colors I liked to snag it please.  Well not more than a month later, maybe it was less, she acutally did find this fabric, brought it to Utah, and we worked on making the little pinched ball things together.  She really did the whole of it though.  On the other hand, I didn't know what backing to put on the cover, and spend the next 3 months looking, till Jared and I randomly decided to check at one more Khols while we were down in Farmington.  Again, by sheer luck he found a sheet set that was perfect for the backing about the same time I was ready to give up.    We got it for a MAJOR steel ($6) and I quickly went to work finishing the duvet cover.  Ta Da!

I really wanted a bedskirt though with shams to complete the finished look so I was stumped again at what to do.  I had two very different kinds of fabrics and colors that went well together but needed something to tie it all in.  At the brink of breaking down and purchasing a bedskirt and pillow shams from Anthropologie (on sale but still somewhat over what I wanted to sink into this project), I remembered that I had this awesome set of batiked fabric from Venezuela that had been left in the cabin for years, was getting eaten by moths, and what not, and rescued in 2008 as we were cleaning out the fabric.  It was just two gorgeous to get rid of.  So I designed my own pleated bed skirt ....

.... and pillow shams with Anita's help and her lending me her sewing machine once again.  I love them.  Eat your heart out Anthropologie!

This project was probably entirely to difficult for me, but somehow it got finished, and since I made some sizing mistakes I ended up having to put snaps on the back of the pillow shams to keep the pillow from bursting out of it's cover.  That was my project over this April Conference weekend. 
Either way, I am one happy camper to have it all done and am quite pleased with it all together.  It even goes with our grassy swamp green carpet!  Next project .... baby's room.