Nursery: All Starts With a Dresser

Two years ago when I had an extreme case of baby fever, I was reading ohdeedoh like crazy and told myself I would easily know how to design and pull together a gorgeous, modern, bright and cheerful nursery.

So it's not a surprise that in my second month of pregnancy, before we had uttered a word of the baby to anyone but our midwife's office, I had purchased a dresser for the nursery. I happened across an Etsy store called Mint Home, who refinish furniture with a bright, modern aesthetic. Oh, and did I mention they are located in Chicago? Meant to be.

I fell in love with their work. And with a dresser on their site. Knowing that with one-of-a-kind pieces you snooze, you lose, I contacted them about dimensions on the piece. Unfortunately, it just wouldn't work well as a changing table. But, they let me know, they love to do custom pieces. Just give them desired dimensions and a budget, and they would see what they'd find.

So I did just that. I mean, it could take months, right? Wrong. Within two days, they sent me a picture of a dresser they found that they thought would be perfect. It was less than inspiring - a drab old dresser. But I trusted their eye, and the piece would be within our budget and the dimensions were great. I gave the ok, and shared my goal of a mustard yellow dresser as a focal point for the nursery.

A couple of weeks later, the lovely ladies of Mint Home delivered this beautiful piece of furniture to our condo:

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Love! It's perfect in every way and ended up being cheaper than any dresser we might buy in a store (with the exception of a basic IKEA dresser).

But, after the fun of finding a dresser, I haven't been quite as sure of myself that I could create an amazing nursery...what I thought would be an easy task has easily become overwhelming.

The next project has been fabric! Who knew fabric could be so intimidating? We've been trying to do a grey, yellow and blue (turquoise? aqua?) color scheme. I've looked at three million different fabrics trying to figure out what shade of blue would work. I finally found an amazing Canadian fabric web site: Tonic Living. There are probably many similar sites in the U.S., but once I found this one I knew I was in a good place. All of the fabric is modern and fun, and there isn't too much on the site to make it overwhelming.

I ordered a bunch of samples and quickly settled on Jessica Jones' Frond. The yellow in real life isn't as gold as pictured, and background is a nice charcoal grey. But where's the blue, you ask? It was next to impossible for me to find a pattern that included a shade of blue that I loved. But...

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...I found this fabulous Robert Kaufman cotton in Glacier. While I'd thought I wanted more of an aqua or lighter blue, this fabric is a nice, rich color and works perfectly with the pattern. I like the idea of just pulling in little accents of this blue.

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Whew! Seeing it all start to come together (at least in my mind) has become a great relief. I wanted to get the big picture items figured out before I start deciding what little details we'll include in the room and what sewing projects I'll try and tackle.