Blue Desert Interiors creates Modern Zen Bedding…at NextInDesign!

Posted on by
2

For our next video, I chose to highlight some of the steps, as an interior designer, I take when I’m designing.  I had to create a color palette and style for a master bedroom suite renovation that needed to be zen…but modern.  Here I focus on the bedding design that set the stage for the rest of the project.  I take you to the McNamara and Hirschman showroom, at the Arizona Design Center, where I had the first inspiration that led to the realization of my clients dream!

http://www.mcnamarahirschman.com/
http://www.texture-fabric.com/pages/index.php
http://arizonadesigncenter.com/


Crazy for Quilts!

Posted on by
2

Sometimes in life, you come across items that are just truly special.  This is one of the stories.  As an interior designer, I’ve always enjoyed seeing the great finds on the PBS show, Antiques Roadshow.  On one of the TV shows, I remember seeing an amazing quilt called a crazy quilt.  The colors and embroidery were just amazing.  On a recent antiquing weekend in Phoenix, I was walking through a shop and stopped dead in my tracks.  There, hanging on a wall, was a real crazy quilt.  Carpe diem! It was going home with me!

A crazy quilt for the modern interior

 Crazy quilts seem like an odd thing for a modern interior designer to be interested in at first thought, but actually not.  Modern design is about creative applications with materials we are familiar with.  These quilts were originally made very simply from material scraps because of necessity from around 1880 on.  The crafting of these quilts as textile arts though soon gained in popularity and notoriety, as some found the work controversial.  As the art progressed, the quilts became purely decorative and were made without batting or lining.  I believe the beauty of these quilts lies in the richness of the materials and details as each maker crafted purely from inspiration.  Here are a few close-up snapshots.

Blue Desert Interiors Crazy Quilt Close Up 1

The embroidered stitches all have wonderful names like impressions, waterlillies, chevron, herringbone and cretan.  I love how the maker used color variations in the threads for highlights.  The fabrics used are just as amazing; silks hand-screened velvets, stripes and plaids. 

Blue Desert Interiors Crazy Quilt Close Up 2

It’s hard to get the scale of this piece in the pictures, but it’s around an amazing 6′ wide by 6′ high.  I can only imagine the time it took to create this masterpiece.  I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing this find with me as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you.  For the moment, I’ve just clipped the quilt to a stabilizing bar and hung it up.  I’m really looking forward though to finding just the right home for this wonderful piece of history!