If you are looking to update your dining room, you may want to consider if your furniture is matchy-matchy or not. While matching furniture, colors, and fabrics is a good thing for cohesiveness, matchy-matchy syndrome happens when you overdo that repetition. Although repetition is a design principle, use it too much and it will overwhelm a room just as surely as too much eclectic design would. The dining room is often guilty of being matchy-matchy because many buy a complete furniture suite. So, your armoire, dining room table, chairs, and so on may all use the same colored wood.
If you think you're dining room furniture is matchy-matchy, there are a few quick fixes. For instance, a tablerunner is a great way to break up the dining room table's surface. While you could just buy one, you may want to make it instead since it's a great DIY project for beginners. Here are some basic instructions to get you started:
What You'll Need
Two pieces of fabric (a larger one for the backside and one for the top side)
Tips: To know how much fabric you'll need, keep in mind that table runners typically cover 1/3 of the table width. And, many table runners look nice with a little overhanging fabric at each end. If you usually dine with placemats, your runner may need to be slightly thinner to give them room. Once you know your basic dimensions, have the fabric store take the fabric off the bolt and cut it; that way, you won't have to do much cutting yourself later on.
A rotary cutter or scissors
Sewing pins
Sewing machine
A ruler
An iron and ironing board
Steps
1. Iron out your fabric so that it is easy to work with. If you still need to size your fabric after the fabric store, now's the time. Take your top fabric, fold it in half (so you don't have to make a lengthy cut), and cut to your desired width. Unfold it; you should have the rough outline of your table runner.
2. Take your backside fabric, fold it in half, and again, cut to your desired width, and then unfold it. Remember, the backside will be a little larger because it will create a border on the outside of your top fabric.
3. Now you'll need to cut both the bottom fabric's and the top fabric's selvage. Selvage is a corruption of the phrase "self-edge." Take a look at the edge of your fabric. You may see white edge with maybe even the fabric store's information printed on it. The selvage keeps your fabric from coming apart and fraying while it's on the bolt; however, you'll want to cut these pieces off since they don't stretch the same way as the rest of your fabric and since they can make sewing more difficult.
4. Lay out your bottom fabric on the table and then lay your top fabric over it (this next part can be a little confusing). You should be laying the top fabric down so that you don't see its pattern or outward side. The reason being is that after you sew these pieces together inside out, you'll eventually pull them right side out and the ragged effect of the seams will be hidden.
5. Pin the both pieces of fabric together at the edges. Place the pins every one or two inches so that the pieces don't come apart. Since the bottom fabric is slightly larger, it will bunch over the top fabric as you pin it. Again, this shouldn't be a problem once you turn it right-side out.
6. Take your runner to the sewing machine. Sew the edges together, and take the pins out as you go. Once you sew each side, pull the runner right-side out.
7. While the sides will have hidden seams, each end of the runner will still be ragged. Take a ruler to get a straight edge and use your rotary cutter--or scissors--to trim stray threads.
8. This next part gets tricky once again. You'll need to fold each corner of the table runner over, so that the ends create a triangle shape. Then, you'll need to sew a seam where those corners meet in the middle.
While this does take a little work, you can definitely end up with a nice looking table runner. Not only will this get rid of some of the matchy-matchy issues in the room, but the table runner is a great way to protect the wood from wear and tear. Instead of a table runner, you could renew the room with a table cloth, chair slipcovers, drapes, and so on. Or, you could go to websites and swap out one or two pieces with some new dining room furniture. There's lots of ways to rejuvenate the room and rid yourself of matchy-matchy syndrome.
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