Beautiful pillows and drapes make such a difference in bringing softness, interest, and, most importantly, the finished look that a space may be lacking. If you’ve got any I-really-need-to-get-them-finished spaces, today we’ve got some fabric recommendations to help you get the job done! Some blogging friends (Lisa of Shine Your Light, Jennifer of Dimples & Tangles, and Pam of Simple Details) and I are each sharing our five favorite fabrics as part of this month’s My Five Favorites series. And we’re welcoming Sarah of Life on Virginia Street as our guest host this month! Sarah is always finding the most beautiful new fabrics, like this fun combination of colors and patterns in the fabrics she chose for guest room pillows – don’t you love them?!:
Thanks for joining us Sarah! Let’s get going and check out my five favorite fabrics (post includes some affiliate links):
Black and White Buffalo Check Fabrics
I’m a serious sucker for black and white buffalo check. I mean SERIOUS. It’s a pattern that’s got enough going on to be interesting without being too busy and it’s pretty much like using a neutral linen because it goes with everything. If you saw my One Room Challenge master bedroom makeover reveal, you already know that my most recent use of a black and white buffalo check fabric was to reupholster this bedroom chair:
For my chair makeover, I used an oversized buffalo check fabric that was c/o McGee & Co. that was c/o Studio McGee. They also offer this same pattern in a bunch of other fun colorways and sell premade buffalo check pillows in all of their color options – you can see everything in their shop {here}.
I also bought a less expensive black and white buffalo check/plaid fabric locally (at Banksville Fabrics) to make a table runner that I’ve been using in my dining room since {my fall home tour} last year:
I love the black and white check pattern as a runner because I can bring in any other colors and patterns for napkins, flowers, etc. and it always just works!
Schumacher’s Chiang Mai Dragon Fabric
While most people love a good buffalo check, Chiang Mai seems to be more of a love it or hate it kind of fabric. Obviously, I love it because I’ve used it in three different colorways in different places in my home. My favorite colorway is Smoke, which is what I used in my bedroom makeover on our front lumbar bed pillow:
Chiang Mai is a pretty expensive fabric but there are lots of ways to use only a small amount of it but still add a big punch. For starters, if you’re using this fabric for a pillow, use a contrasting fabric like I did for the back of the pillow to save some money. Or you can do what I did in our living room and wrap a small piece around lumbar pillows to add a dose of neutral pattern:
I also love the more colorful Ebony colorway and have used remnant pieces of it to wrap around books (a fun and easy way to add color to a space) and to add some pops of color to my tablescapes like the “napkins” I used in {our Christmas dining room}:
I say “napkins” because I don’t actually use them as such – they’re just there to look pretty for a special dinner party until it’s time to actually start dinner. My trick is to only use them at the two placesettings at the ends where my husband and I sit and discretely put the “real” napkins that we use on our seats 🙂
You can buy pillows made in Chiang Mai Dragon fabric on Etsy (mine was made c/o Pillow Time Girls {here}) and you can buy yardage of this fabric at DecoratorsBest {here}. If you’re just looking for remnant pieces to use like I did to wrap around a lumbar pillow, a book, or as napkins, I’d recommend contacting some Etsy shops that sell pillows with this fabric – they often have remnant pieces they will sell at a reduced price!
Nate Berkus’ San Lucia Fabric
A fabric that I’ve used in my house for a few years now and still haven’t tired of is Nate Berkus’ San Lucia fabric in Mineral found at Calico (update: unfortunately this fabric is no longer available). I bought a yard of this fabric, cut it in half, and added white knotted fringe to one end of each piece to drape over the back of our living room swivel chairs to give them a softer, more interesting look:
If you missed this project, you can check out the simple DIY of creating my fringed chair throws {here}.
Robert Allen’s Lighten Up Fabric
This favorite fabric is pretty appropriately named because lightening up our home office is exactly what it does. Our home office is a small space with dark charcoal walls so I wanted to choose a fabric for drapes that would lighten the space up and and bring in a little color. I went with Robert Allen’s Lighten Up fabric in Lemongrass (available {here}) and love it:
The Lemongrass colorway is a citrine, greenish-yellow that stands out and looks so pretty against our dark walls:
Plastic-Coated Fabrics / Oilcloth
Even though I just talked about this fabric in last week’s post about our back patio, I had to add it to my list of favorites because I’m pretty much obsessed with laminated fabrics right now. There are various different types/names for them (acrylic-coated, laminated, oilcloth…) but essentially they’re all cloth that’s been treated on one side with a waterproof coating, making them perfect for tablecloths, splat mats for high chairs, or any other purpose where you want some pretty color or pattern but it has to hold up to messes. I have IKEA’s SOFIA plastic-coated fabric, which is sold by the yard, as a tablecloth for our outdoor table and love both the look and ease of it:
I did a lot of looking around online before choosing the IKEA fabric and found lots of other pretty ones along the way – here are a few of the other laminated fabrics that were among my final contenders:
Now that I’m done dishing about my five favorite fabrics, it’s time to hop over and check out my friends’ faves – I can’t wait to see their picks!:
Pam – Simple Details
Jennifer – Dimples & Tangles
Lisa – Shine Your Light
Sarah – Life on Virginia Street
I’ll see you guys later in the week for my summer home tour!
yes buffalo check is totally you!
Anything black and white can do no wrong in my book 🙂
Gorgeous picks! I love every single one of them. Plus, I can never get your office out of my mind! 🙂 Thanks for asking me to co-host with you lovely ladies!
Thanks Sarah – and I’ll throw that office comment right back at you – love yours!!
Love all your choices, and you are so right on about Chiang Mai and people feeling strongly either way about it. I adore your grey colorway and the ebony….actually I love all the colorways, but my entire family despises the pillows we have and think the dragon is freaky 🙂 I’m so excited the Ikea Sofia comes in a waterproof version now! Thanks for sharing!
It’s so funny about Chiang Mai isn’t it?! Even that little pillow on our bed (that I made sure didn’t have the dragon) my husband doesn’t like one bit. What do they know?! 🙂
Great finds Kris! I have a question on the oil cloth you used for your outside table. Does it have a backing on it that prevents it from slipping around on your table? And you don’t have to hem the edges under? My 75 year old mother-in-law keeps talking about wanting an oil cloth for her kitchen table because they don’t slip around like the cheap plastic ones do. Would love to surprise her with a couple if that’s true about the not slipping. Thanks!
Hi Mary! The plastic-coated SOFIA fabric that I have as a table cloth doesn’t have a backing but the back side isn’t coated like the top of it has some grip to it.. Also, it’s much weightier than a typical vinyl tablecloth so it doesn’t slip around on the table. And no, you don’t have to hem the edges under – you just cut them!
I love the timeless appeal of a buffalo check. I am definitely not a lover of the Chiang Mai, do not get that one! Love all your other suggestions and love that throw! I missed that tutorial!
Cindy…no Chiang Mai for you?? Ok, that has to be about the first thing we differ on decor-wise because our tastes are typically so similar! I’ll tell my husband you’re on his anti-Chiang Mai team!
I love them all. Most of all I really like the way you mix and match fabrics so successfully. Buffalo check is an all time favorite of mine too.
The Ikea black and white stripe is on my list to buy for our patio table, thanks for introducing that one to me.
xo,
Karen
Thanks Karen! I think you’ll love the plastic-coated black and white – it looks great and is so easy to wipe clean!
Such pretty choices, Kris! I’m a big fan of the smoke colorway of Chiang Mai, and I’ve never used it, definitely need to remedy that! Nate is one of my all time favs and your idea with the fringe is genius!!
Thanks Pam! I would just love to have drapes out of that smoke colorway but wow, the price on that is crazy!
Love the buffalo check! All beautiful picks!
Thanks Becky!
I love the dining room fabric its timeless!! xo K
Thanks Karolyn!
I absolutely love the dining room with the black and white buffalo check table runner. Mixing the prints with the drapes looks amazing. Where can I find those drapes?