Robert Allen Tidal Bay

I have been relentlessly stalking this fabric for about two weeks now.


Robert Allen Tidal Bay in Pewter

I stumbled across it during one of my frequent fabricguru.com virtual window shopping expeditions.  I love fabricguru - it's lots of remnants and slightly damaged fabrics at discount prices.  It's like an outlet mall for fabric.  They have some great brands, like Duralee, Kravet, Brunschwig & Fils, and (obviously) Robert Allen.

I previously saw the print (in navy) on Knight Moves.  I remembered really liking it then too.

There are lots of colorways.  Fabricguru has it in "navy," "pewter," and "ice".  The Designer's Attic (a discount fabric blog) sold 2 1/4 yards of it for $57 in "cafe".

Fabricguru is selling it for $5.95 a yard!

Why so cheap?  Well, it has a flaw.  "A white spot in middle." 

Now, as much as I adore fabricguru, this is one of the two reasons I've never bought anything from them before.  First off, they have a flat rate shipping fee of $4.99.  That's great if you're buying tons of fabric, but for two yards I kind of feel ripped off.  Secondly, since they are selling damaged goods online, wouldn't it make sense to take a picture of the damage?  Sometimes they do - such as the navy colorway's "scattered white spots" - but for the pewter, if there's a white spot in the picture, I can't find it.

I was a little torn.  Should I buy it and risk getting it with a huge white spot in the middle that I can't cover up?  Should I buy extra just in case?  Maybe it's not worth the risk?

I checked with the boyfriend, who, for the first time ever, actually liked something I showed to him.  In fact, I think he was a little jealous that I wasn't buying it for our room, but for our son's room.  I want to make a fake roman shade for the large window in his room and I thought this would be the perfect fabric.  I plan on using orange trim along the bottom, sort of like this picture.

Via DecorPad

With the boyfriend's enthusiastic approval, I decided to buy the fabric, risks and all.  However, with Christmas on the way, I had to wait for "splurge" money from the sale of the blue bed.  You can imagine how frustrating that was - the bed sitting on Craigslist for a week while I agonized over whether the fabric would sell out.  Originally, they only had 26 yards and over the next week I saw that slowly drop to only 19 yards.

Luckily, I was finally able to pull the trigger yesterday.  I bought 2 yards, which should be plenty to make the shade.  I'll do an update when it gets here.  There's still a couple of yards left if anyone else is interested.  Now that I've gotten the few yards I need, I have no problem passing along the good deal.