She's reading the final revision abstract of her first thesis chapter submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal! Quite a big deal in the academic world, it also represents a significant milestone in progress as well as relief for a PhD candidate who is All-But-Discertation (ABD - All But Done!) and eager to complete research. These chapters endure rounds of multi-party revisions, reworks, and intense scrutiny. It's a big deal to get it past the gauntlet. And she did it. We are very proud of our resident genius.
She'll probably tell you that it was long overdue and that it could have been better if another card or two had fallen in her favor, but that's just the perfectionist talking. Far from letting up on the gas pedal, our hero endeavors to complete the research for her second chapter within the month so she can jet-set to Chile to present the hard facts to leading researchers in her field. Once the research is complete, there is the writing and the revisions again, but the silver lining is that will then be two compete. And when the third is complete, maybe Bessie will be too! She'll need to be...We celebrated Brie's milestone in a few ways. One of them was taking a trip to Portland to Fabric Depot looking to reupholster the Bouncing Bullet.
How do you feel about this place Brie?
Fabric Depot is enormous. So enormous and chock-full of designer fabrics that Seattlites routinely pilgrimage here in search of the variety - a rare feat indeed considering how much larger Seattle is than Portland, and how far it is to travel between the two cities.
We had our color swatches at the ready. We brought a piece of the red countertop, the green countertop, the color swatch for the paint, and a piece of the bamboo floor.
Thankfully for me (I was OVERWHELMED by the barrage of colors - I nearly had an epileptic fit because my eyes couldn't focus - ok maybe that's hyperbole, but still), we restricted our search to the upholstery section. That narrowed the choices down to the back 20% of the depot. This place is huge.
We got down to business. And no, we were not choosing conservatively. Surely you must know that by now?
Please, walk with us down the rows of choices....
Cool huh?
Barangadangadang... those circles are reverberatish!
Mmm. Orange and tribally.
Oh my God, I love it. A giant peacock feather? Hell to the Yeah!
Cool modernism design. With dragonflies!
Geometry is cool. Yellow and white polka-spots? Also cool.
More modernism designs. We consider modernism fabrics to be period correct with the era we're looking to restore Bessie - her original era of manufacture - the Machine Age. But I prefer the more retro-modernism designs. Like the ones that are made now to look like they were made then, cuz the ones that were made then aren't exactly as cool. Does it sound like I'm talking out of my ass to anyone else?
First one to get major consideration. Trouble is that it's white. Do you wear white when you go camping? That's right, you don't. But this is actually an off-grey, and we loved it, so it made the first cut. Along with a boatload of others!
I love this design. If only the colors were more saturated. And again, the white issue. We declared before we arrived - NO WHITE!
Mango Madness. (yes, that was a Snapple flavor)
Re: the epileptic fit. Actually, we liked this print but it remind us both of something else. For me, it was G-Force. All the G-Force dudes had this owl-brow on their helmets. Google it. And if you don't know about G-Force, you missed out.
Sweet! The peacock feathers again! There's a lot of them though. And the orientation on the fabric is wrong for the direction it will run. Man this gets tricky.
The bottom print just reminds me of New Orleans. Love it. The colors too. Funk. E.
Perhaps we should go with a solid?
Nah!!
This print is probably my favorite. The colors just didn't work though. Not saturated enough, and not large enough, so it looked too busy for our purposes. Can you see the dragon face in each print? And the maroon trim? Oh it was hard for me to pass on this one. But it just wasn't right.
Well this one just screams 50s, yeah? Maybe 70s. But I think 50s. Snap Crackle Pop in hex, bitches!
One of us loved this fabric and one of us thought it was hideous. I won't say which one was which (Brie) since this post is a blended congratulatory post for Brie (it was Brie) for accomplishing something she'll never have to do again (Brie didn't think the smears looked like poo) and it would be poor form to tease her about her taste (this print is terrible) when I clearly am attracted to ridiculous funky fabrics too.
I don't even know what's going on in this fabric. Are we on overload and now we're looking at absolutely anything? Didn't we say no white? But it's so weird, I'm strangely attracted...
And see, it doesn't look so bad when framed by wood. But wait, NO WHITE!
Ok, at this point, we wandered into the vinyl section and after a brief pow-wow where Brie told me she could sew vinyl just as easily as she could sew fabric, we recalibrated everything since we both love the vinyl booths you sit in at diners and such. So we started looking at all kinds of wild options.
The camera was stashed as we dove into options after options, but when we found this one, everything just clicked. It's turquoise vinyl, with embossed cowboy boot designs. In a word, it's bad-ass. If you can pull off turquoise cowboy boots, you are just bad-ass. (period)
Anchored by this choice, the other choices easily fell in line and the color palette just came together like magic. I don't know what the word is for when situations just materialize like that (har-har!), but I wished I did. Because that's the word that happened.
Below is the final cut. And how they match up to our color swatches.
How do you feel about these choices Brie? How do you feel about getting that first paper out of the way?
Yeah, me too. Congratulations again, love!
