This week’s One Room Challenge update is all about fabric projects for the space…and let me tell you, I have been a sewing machine this last week! (Ha ha, get it? Sewing machine? Okay…moving on!). I know each week I say “These are the projects I’ve been most excited about,” but it’s true. Now that a majority of the hard, labor-intensive projects are behind us, the coming weeks will be filled with the smaller, more fun projects I enjoy the most. I have been waiting weeks to play with all the fun fabrics I selected for this space; and while their overall impact in the space isn’t as dramatic as past week updates, it’s so nice to have these elements done all the same!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Before I dive into the details of everything accomplished this week, here is a quick peek of where the room sits as of today!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

The room has been cleared and arranged, the ceiling has been painted, and wallpaper has been hung around the room and in the closet. The big addition this week: textiles!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

As many of you know, fabric is my thing. I honestly could spend hours looking through fabrics, assembling collections, and selecting just the right ones for a particular space or project. For this color- and pattern-loving gal, fabrics are absolutely one of my favorite elements to add into a space, and assembling this collection for this room was just too much fun. Here is a reminder of my fabric “plan” for this room!5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Super Hero Kids Fabric | Blue Plaid Curtain | Red Star Flannel | Grey Star Flannel | Red Star Minky | Blue Star Minky | Yellow Chevron Flannel | Grey Alphabet Flannel | Blue Chevron Flannel | Grey Diamond Flannel | Green Dot Flannel

Buffalo Check Cornice Boxes

Let’s first chat a bit about the window treatments for this room. Like in many other spaces I’ve done over the years, my first (and ultimately final) choice was to do cornice boxes over the two windows. I have always loved the clean, simple lines of cornices and think they are a great way to add a punch of pattern and color without requiring yards and yards and yards of fabric. Since the walls were going to be quite busy and the room is already a touch small, not adding extra “fluff” around the room seamed like the obvious choice. (This choice may come back to haunt me if Baby Boy prefers a completely dark room – only time will tell!)

I will go into more detail on the cornice boxes in another post if there is interest, but the process is fairly straight forward. Using the extra plywood from the closet built-in, Greg cut and assembled the two wooden structures for the boxes.

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

There are lots of different ways these boxes can be assembled. Since we had hardware on-hand from past cornice boxes that likely won’t get hung in this house, we just repeated our past process of using L-brackets affixed to the inside of each corner. Notice, below, that Greg also notched out a 3/4″ x 3″ section of the returns so that the boxes could be hung in line with the trim in the room (rather than above it).

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

With the boxes built, I had the fairly straight-forward task of covering them with batting and fabric. However, what I thought was going to be a quick and easy staple job turned into a bit more of a project than I was anticipating. #storyofmylife The fabric I found and used here is actually a curtain panel from Lowes. I was super pumped to pay $24 for an 84×50″ cut of fabric (rather than $20+/yard of other fabrics I was looking at online. By the dimensions, I had PLENTY of fabric to cover both boards. But when it came time to make the pattern consistent across both boards, it was an entirely different story. I honestly think I sat and stared at the boards and fabric for about 90 minutes straight, brainstorming and trouble-shooting various options. The problem? If I wanted the exact same scheme of squares to run across the top of both boards, I didn’t have enough length of fabric (once you factored in excess for wrapping, etc). The only way I’d be able to have the same pattern across the top of both boards was to cover the small board with one width of the curtain and then piece together another length using the remainder of the curtain – this option would require pattern matching and sewing. I knew that having the same pattern across the top would ultimately matter to me, so I took the time to cut and piece the fabric together for the larger board.

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Once I finally made the decision between easy+quick versus correct+tedious, then it was a fairly straight forward job of carefully stapling both some batting and the fabric panels around the wooden boxes.

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Here is a quick snapshot of the return on the larger window box. It may be hard to see, but there is actually a seam there where I had to join excess fabric in order to make the strip long enough to fit on this board while still keeping the same pattern of squares across the top as the smaller board. It’s certainly not perfect, but was worth the effort in the long run to have both boards look the same!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

The other unforeseen issue I ran into on these boards was how difficult it was to work with the checked fabric. The past few times I have made cornice boxes, I’ve used an all-over or solid pattern, meaning I didn’t need to stress over how the patterned was centered or laid out on the board itself. This time, however, getting the check pattern on the fabric to line up with the edges of the box was SUPER tricky. As you can see below, in my efforts to pull the fabric taught (to reduce puckering and create a nice tight box), it also skewed the pattern a bit. At first I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. Then I determined it really bothered me, so I attempted to fix it. Despite un-stapling and re-stapling the top and bottom two different times, I couldn’t get the pattern to straighten out without un-doing and re-staple the entire project. As of right now, I don’t want to re-staple the sides (which were also pretty tricky because of the notching) so the wonkiness remains. Let’s just pretend it’s straight, okay?!?!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

I learned my lesson on not pulling the fabric too tight, so the second box turned out pretty close to perfect. Good thing this is the view I’ll see mostly while sitting in the chair 😉

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

All in all, I am thrilled with how the window cornices turned out and still think that buffalo check fabric is such a home run in this space!

Sewing for Baby

The other fabric-related projects I tackled this week were a bunch of things for baby! Even though some of the things I worked on aren’t directly related to the “design” of the room, I figured I might as well knock them all out while I had my machine threaded and was in the fabric zone! On my list to make were:

  • Crib sheets x3
  • Changing pad covers x3
  • Burp cloths
  • Hooded towel
  • Car seat cover

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

I am going to go into detail about what all I made and what tutorials I used in another upcoming post, but I’ll give you a peek today! Because I knew pretty much everything I was going to make, I decided to spend one full day cutting and another day or so sewing. I’ve never really worked in such a “mass production” way before, but it was really nice to move from project to project without having to stop and pull out my cutting supplies each time!

Crib Sheets

The first project(s) I made were the crib sheets and changing pad covers. I made both of these items when Henry was a baby and both made my Top Projects for Baby list, so these were a “must” again. Why three of each you ask? Last time around I made two of each. However, I twas surprised to learn how LONG both the crib and changing pad were used with Henry, so I thought having one more of each would help with wear-and-tear and boredom! Plus, it gave me an excuse to work two more fabrics into the space 😉

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Just as my design board suggests, I used the super hero fabric, the red/blue star minky, and some grey and red star flannel for all the items. With each set I made, I felt like the room got cuter and cuter…and I still don’t know which ones I like the very best! Thankfully, they all coordinate so I can mix and match to my heart’s content!

Here is the Super Hero kids sheet and changing pad cover…

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Here is the red star set…

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

And here is the grey and blue set.

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

I honestly can’t choose a favorite, I love them all so much for different reasons! For now, the red is on the crib and changing pad since they were made/photographed last!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Burp Cloths

As silly as it sounds, I honestly couldn’t wait to make some cute burp cloths for baby. They were one of my most-used and favorite projects when Henry was a baby and I was literally chomping at the bit to sit down and transform all these adorable flannels into super fun (and absorbent!) burp cloths!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

I like to line my burp cloths with terry cloth…so while this project is a bit messy to complete, the results are so well worth it!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

Too Ambitious?

Both the carseat cover and hooded towel are cut out and ready to go, but I just didn’t get to them this week (cleaning the house won out over some sewing time this weekend – boo!) They’ll take me about 2-3 hours total to finish up (hopefully today!) and I’ll be sure to share those when I give an in-depth look at everything I’m making for baby!

So there we are at the end of Week 4! This room is really starting to feel complete (the most complete room of the whole house, that’s for sure!), and I can’t wait to start bringing in some more of the finishing details that are cluttering up the upstairs hallway and playroom. Our final “big” project is to wrap up the closet, which is on the docket for this weekend (along with Halloween costumes!) – wish me luck that I get it all done!

5 weeks to transform 1 room = The One Room Challenge | Come see how I am transforming this bland and boring rental bedroom into a super-star themed baby boy nursery!

A big thanks again to Linda from Calling It Home on organizing this fun design challenge. Don’t forget to check in with all the other participants here!

See You Soon!
Megan