A few weeks after I moved to Kansas City, I was at the Pottery Barn and saw "my" duvet. It was part of the display bed, and it looked even better in person than it had online. It had all of the colors: plum, turquoise/teal, and browns. The finish, although a cotton sateen, was great and not too shiny. Strangely, I did not see any of the sets out for sale though. I forced myself to walk away. When I got home, I looked it up online again. It seemed that my duvet may have been discontinued. It was listed as being on sale, but the website only had the twin size (twin size is sold online only and is often the last to go). Sigh. I knew that I should have bought it.
Eventually, I ended up in the Plaza again, just walking through the stores for inspiration. As I walked into Pottery Barn, I decided to see if my duvet was still on display, knowing that it would be gone and I would be disappointed. But it was still there. So I asked an employee if they had it for sale. He confirmed that it was discontinued, and that they did not have any. So I asked if I could buy the display, as I assumed that it was a full queen. He looked shocked at first, but said it was absolutely an option and that it actually helped them because people continued to ask about the pattern and they did not have it. Sold.
In retrospect, I probably just should have bought it when I first saw it. Especially as the only place that now has the shams is eBay, and they are expensive! When I got home, I immediately put it on my comforter, and it was perfect. It was dark and thick enough to cover the pattern of the original comforter. Plus, it was beautiful, and so soft.
But then I looked at my new, recently created, so much work (relatively speaking) roman shades. And the blue of the fabric was too bright.
I love to layer colors, and I'm not one to make sure that all of the different tones are "matchy matchy." But these were both too close and not close enough. It was just enough off to make the room look like a three-year-old had designed it instead of complex and layered. What to do? My first thought was to return the duvet. So sad, but doable. But this was my linchpin piece that would pull the whole room together. Should I just start over on the shades instead, and pick a fabric that was a better match? Ugh. I put a lot of work into those shades!
I decided to keep the duvet. But before I trashed the shades, I decided to see if I could somehow "mute" the color. So I went to my handy DIY expert, Dr. Google, to research tea staining. It turns out that there are two methods for staining fabric, tea staining, and coffee staining. (This website has a good description of both and the effect that they give.) Lucky for me, coffee staining seemed to give more of the color effect that I was looking for, since I had coffee in the house and not tea!
Next question, how to stain the fabric? I really did not want to take the fabric down, despite the fact that most of the demonstrations required dipping the entire piece of fabric. Would putting the coffee into a spray bottle work? I decided to run a test.
The flash on the camera bleached out the pictures, so it is difficult to see the difference, but I decided that overall the experiment went well. The process itself was fairly easy. I released the blinds to their full length, and evenly sprayed the fabric until it was thoroughly saturated. In some places, this did cause the glue dots to loosen, but I reattached them without problem. I did have a paper towel that I used to blot the fabric and wipe up the excess coffee on the window sill. You can see in this picture that the coffee darkened the fabric just enough (the window on the far left has been stained, but the other two windows have not.
I'll come out and admit that I did not finish the fourth window in the bedroom when I did the others. This meant that I was able to stain that piece of fabric before I hung it. For anyone looking to replicate the process, it was much easier! I was able to dampen the fabric more, which helped to ensure an even finish. But either way, it worked!
The end result is that I get to keep my duvet, and my window shades. As a bonus, I have a new technique for adjusting fabric color.
:)
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