Bedding & Linen Favorites: You and your guests deserve the finest linens and bedding. First, if you're spending a third of your life in bed, why not splurge on great linens? Second, your guests also deserve the White Glove treatment when it comes to linens. Here are some of our favorite linen and bedding sources:

Denyse Schmidt Quilts leads off our favorites. Combining authentic folk design with kick-ass artistry, Ms. Schmidt's quilts and pillows are the toast of the bedding category. Some of her quilts and pillows are shown below (quilt names, in order, are Drunk Love in a Log Cabin, Tulip Tree Applique, and Snake Charmer).

Williams Sonoma Home proudly carries the Chambers Heritage line of fine linens. We love the Scallop Applique linens pictured below.

Schweitzer Linen specializes in amazing fine linens and home accessories, and we fell with a thud for the romance and spring-time watercolor freshness of their Dogwood line (photo below).

Frette is top-of-the-line when it comes to linens. Many hotels boast luxurious Frette linens, and we love their classic, clean Hotel Bed Collection (below).

Last, but by no means least, are the raves we have for Pratesi linens. Look at their exciting Louvre/Checks combination and their beautiful Classic Chain pattern below!

Summer Style Points to Pottery Barn.  Who isn't getting deluged with mailorder home decor catalogs from companies like Pottery Barn, William Sonoma Home, Anthropologie, and others? Everyone is trying to push merchandise in a slow economy and drive sales to their retail outlets and websites.

Let's give some recognition to Pottery Barn for keeping up with other style trendsetters. In their June 2008 catalog mailing -- unfortunately emblazoned on the front cover with the huge word SALE, dwarfing the Pottery Barn masthead (no doubt in an appeal to the economically challenged U.S. household) -- Pottery Barn scores some important style points with fresher-than-usual takes on bedding and linens. Skip their tired Animal Prints and clunky Sumatra collection, and go directly to the following.

We think Pottery Barn's Woodland duvet cover and shams are fresh, with their retro botanical patterns (above). A bonus: they're printed on 200-thread-count organically grown cotton percale.

In a crisp look for summer bedding, PB's Sketch-Pad duvet cover and shams are glam (above). The artistic, loose interpretation of botanicals and playful use of colors on a clean white background are selling points.

Hats off to Pottery Barn for their perky Pearl Embroidered Collection update of the getting-old-fast hotel linens look for the home (above). They've turned those perfect (and perfectly boring) embroidered stripes into embroidered satin-stitch dots, with single rows on the cotton percale sheeting and pillow covers and double rows on the duvet cover and shams.

Finally, in another inspired floral/botanical leap, Pottery Barn's Madeline bedding (above) would really pop against solid-colored duvet covers and shams, with sheets and pillow cases that look like they were borrowed from a 1940s photo shoot (which is a compliment!).