#89- Domo Arigato Mr Roboto

This post is supposed to be all about how I found some great, affordable fabric and made my son some beautiful and unique bedding for his first big boy bed.  I'll get straight to the punch line, I failed.

I've been searching for months for the perfect fabric to make a duvet cover for Ryder's new bedroom.  Having sewn a few duvets in the past, I knew that the cheapest way to do this is with a set of sheets.  A twin duvet requires 10 yards of fabric, which depending on your cost per yard could work you into the $100 bedding range pretty quickly, but a set of twin sheets can be much more affordable, usually in the $20-$50 range.  You can trim them both slightly smaller to remove elastic from the fitted sheet, or just find 2 flat sheets to sew together.  Easy-peasy.  Finding the perfect sheets on the other hand, not nearly as easy.


Here's a little reminder of the room we're working with:

Since I couldn't find any sheets that I liked, I started the hunt for fabric.  I was hoping for some with a lot of white on it, since the walls in Ryder's new room are a deep blue, and we'd like to make them work if we can.  Orange and gray as accents would be a plus.  I found these options:

 

Pretty darn adorable, right?  The problem is that a lot of the robots were really small, and I didn't want a print that was indistinguishable when you walked in the room.  Plus, the $10-$15 price tags on these guys made this project a lot more expensive than I had in mind.  Then I came across this fabric which had one of those great bright red discount stickers on it:

Also pretty cute.  The images were still a little small though, and I didn't want an entirely orange bedspread for him, so I started brainstorming how I could mix this fabric in with the other colors I was looking for in the room.  Here's one mock up:

It's not bad, but I'm not all that thrilled with so much navy, especially in a bright blue room.  And it's pretty hard to tell that those little guys are robots from any distance.  So in the end, I caved.  The Land of Nod (Crate and Barrel's kid's store) had this amazing duvet, and it was love at first site.  Mostly white?  Check. Grays, Blues and Oranges?  Check.  Big adorable robots?  Check-ity check check.  

At $49 for the duvet alone, it's a bit more pricey than I intended to go.  But after I discovered that making one would cost much more, buying one already made that was exactly what I was looking for seemed like a bargain. All it took was a free shipping email to throw me over the edge. (I can't buy full price without a coupon, it's just not in my nature!)  Plus, I justified that since I'll be refinishing a bunch of used, mis-matched furniture as well as building some new pieces, I'm already saving a bunch of money on Lil' Man's room.  I felt downright swanky when my package arrived in the mail.  So this is how the other half (that doesn't have to sew, build and make their own decor) lives.

What do you think?  Did I make the right choice?  Does anyone else get that "I'm a celebrity" type of feeling when they buy something from a high priced store that's not in the clearance section?  Did I just prove publicly how cheap I am?  I prefer thrifty thank you very much.