Dining Room Progress – Wall Sconces, More Fabrics, and Bench Redesign

And then about an hour later, I remembered that I happen to have sconces on hand as well. In fact, I have two pairs of sconces that are no longer being used. They’re just sitting in the sunroom waiting to either be sold or given away. And one pair of those sconces just happens to have shades that would go perfectly in this dining room. So I got them out, dusted them off, and hung them on the wall.

I love these in here! (I still need to hang the artwork on the wall.) The great thing about keeping a color palette consistent throughout the main areas of the house is that items like this can very easily be moved from one room to another and look intentional.

Of course, they don’t have electricity to them right now. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about that, but I’ll figure something out. So right now, they’re just wall decorations.

But I was so excited to see how perfectly they go in this room, and more importantly, I was excited about using what I already have on hand.

In addition to hanging sconces, I also spent yesterday planning and purchasing everything I need to build the new benches today. But also, I worked on the striped fabric again. I thought I had the striped fabric all worked out. If you’ll remember, this was the last iteration I shared with you.

And this is how that pattern looks on an upholstered chair. Spoonflower doesn’t have a dining room chair option, so this is the best option for seeing how it looks on upholstery.

So I thought that part of the process was done. I was wrong. Enter my mom. 😀 I opened up my email to see two emails from her about my striped fabric. She wasn’t loving the stripes that I had designed and suggested that I go with a more imperfect watercolor striped design instead. She had done two mockups with this idea that she attached to her email. The first one had darker stripes…

And the other one had lighter stripes.

And in a follow up email, she included a picture of the chairs in a watercolor striped fabric on all three sections of the chairs, plus a pattern suggestion and a color key.

Then I realized that while I don’t have that capability, I bet that ChatGPT could make one for me. So I gave ChatGPT all the info, the color key, the drapery fabric, and all the instructions I could think of, including the instruction to make it a pattern that could be tiled so that it’s seamless, and this is what it gave me. This is the full width of the pattern, but it’s not the full length. The actual pattern is a seamless one.

I uploaded that to Spoonflower to take a look at it, and this is what it looked like.

And then I made a couple of changes based on the drapery fabric. I had it make the light yellow a little more golden, and I had it make the aqua stripe a little more teal, both of which were based on colors directly from the floral drapery fabric. And this is what it gave me.

So I uploaded that final design to Spoonflower, and this is what it looks like.

So I still haven’t ordered the fabric, but this time, you can blame that on my mom. 😀 I’m glad that she sent me in this new direction. Y’all know I love anything that looks like watercolor, but I didn’t think I had the ability to make anything that looks like this. But we live in a new day and age with AI now. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. We’re not putting that genie back in the bottle. And it really came in handy with getting the right look for this fabric.

I’m going to work with it a little more to make sure it’s just right, and then I’ll be ready to order a swatch to be sure it looks good with the drapery fabric in the actual room. I might need to mute all of the colors to make them softer, but I loke this overall direction. And I’m going to use the striped fabric on all three sections of the chairs.

UPDATE: I just realized I forgot to mention the bench redesign! Since I’m not getting my solid pink on the dining chairs as I had previously planned, I’m going to use solid pink on the benches. And I did a little redesign on the benches as well. Here’s the final look that I’ll be aiming for.