Fibers & Tricks for Temporary Living

Most landlords don’t trust their occupants to make permanent changes to their house, such as painting the walls a bright color. Painting is usually allowed if the color is a neutral and approved by the landlord. When on a budget, it is not always an option to go out and buy new colorful furniture to brighten up the room surrounded by tan walls. What you can do instead is fill picture frames with different fabric colors to add pops of color. If you’re not an artist, you can wrap a canvas with a fun printed fabric to brighten up the walls. (I have used this technique when trying to cover extremely dated wood paneling that the landlord would not let me paint). So go out and buy some fabric. Don’t feel like you must buy the most expensive fabric at the store. A good trick to saving money when shopping for fabrics is to buy curtains at Ross instead of fabric by the yard. You can usually get away with plenty of fabric options for under $4 per curtain panel. Don’t be afraid to cut up a curtain… just remember how cheap it was!

• Do you have an old table with a glass topper? Update it by painting it and adding a fun piece of fabric under the glass. You can even do multiple pieces for a patchwork look. This way, the second the pattern you chose goes out of style you can change it quickly…a perfect trick for temporary living.
• You can also completely change your headboard by stapling on a little padding and fabric. This is a very popular look right now. Add some crisscross ribbon or buttons and you’ve got a handmade headboard that looks like it came straight off of HGTV.

When choosing fibers to use for project such as these, it is important that you know a little bit about them first. This will help you make a well informed decision instead of finding out that a fabric is not durable enough for your project after you buy it. For starters, there are natural and man made fibers. The most common of the natural fibers are cotton, linen, wool, and silk. Cotton is absorbent, resistant to abrasion, sunlight and soil. Linen is designed to look worn. It is smooth and brittle, but extremely prone to wrinkles. Wool, on the other hand, can easily regain its shape. It is very durable, cleanable (dry clean), and soil resistant. The most common complaint about wool is that it feels itchy.

Man made fibers are all powerful and made to perform. For example polyester is considered the best all around performing fiber. It is light resistant, wrinkle resistant, dimensionally stable, available in a variety of forms, easy to clean, can be recycled, popular for upholstery (great for the headboard project), and often used for drapery. Nylon is a man made fiber that is often used for carpet because it can handle high traffic areas. It is most vulnerable to pilling, sags in humidity, and it is not flame retardant, but can be after treated to pass most fire codes. Acrylic is another man made fiber that is soft, bulky, and warm. It is unpopular for furnishings because it has low abrasion resistance and flame resistance can not be added. However, there is a fiber called modacrylic that has been developed as a flame resistant version of acrylic.