Using Vintage Fabrics in Interior Design

Searching for vintage fabrics, ribbon, and passementerie to use in interior design takes patience and a willingness to lift stacks of fabric and sift through baskets filled with carded sequins and beads to get to the treasure at the bottom. It is a special pleasure to give new life to old fabrics.

This week in John’s Road Antique Mall in Boerne, Texas the search yielded a hand fringed linen bath towel. Thinking this would make a perfect guest towel, perhaps with a monogram added, the prize came home with me. The towel had been laundered and the fringe was a bit twisted, but this was easily remedied with a few minutes of work using one of my husband’s antique awls to gently separate the threads. Imagine the wondrous person who used thread to crochet the edges of the towel!

This piece of fabric is labeled 1800’s French Fabric and was found in Galveston, Texas in a shop owned by fabric and quilt designer, Robyn Pandolph. Robyn’s shop is no longer there, but it was on my list of stops every weekend we spent in Galveston. Though I am not a quilter, I appreciated the beauty of her space as well as the vintage fabrics and French brocante finds. We bring the tiny 1930’s “ivory” handled flatware purchased there on every Hill Country picnic!

It was exactly twenty years after purchase of the fabric to the time I was able to bring myself to cut into it. If you study the design you can see there is a lovely central arrangement of roses tied with a ribbon at the bottom and an arch of leaves to the left.  

To capture this pattern for two pillow fronts it was necessary to use some new taffeta fabric for the pillow backs. The Italian ribbon looked good in theory but took away from the impact of the antique fabric so it was saved for another project. The pillows are 8” x 16” and would be lovely on a pair of wing chairs or bergeres. Time has softened the brightness of the colors to a whisper.

Another way to “save” vintage fabric that might otherwise languish in the back of a cabinet or the bottom of a basket is to use it to make your own napkins. While vintage damask napkins may be rather costly, you may find vintage damask tablecloths stacked in shops for quite reasonable prices. A close inspection may reveal patched places, holes, frays, or even stains. This challenge is part of what makes the process fun for me. Others may want a pristine tablecloth, but we are in search of vintage fabric for making napkins!

You may want to begin by washing and drying the tablecloths. This is a bit scary as you might lose some fabric in the process, but of course you are going to be washing the napkins you have made so it has to be done and better to do it now than find the napkin disintegrated in the wash after you have already cut and sewn it. Here you see a stack of napkins cut and ready to be sewn; for larger “lapkins” cut 26” by 26” squares. Then, turn over about ¼ inch and sew the raw edges in place. Next, fold over 1” all around the edges and iron it in place. Then, sew this folded edge down right on the inside edge of the fold, leaving a top stitch 1” from the edge of the napkin. This gives it a somewhat tailored look.

You can use the napkins folded or pull them through napkin rings as you see here.

An embroidered linen night dress can be cut and mounted on mat board with archival glue to create a folded paper book of mezzotints as you see here. My vintage lace pieces have become the subject, drawn with a metal stylus on a prepared copper plate and then inked and printed on a French American printing press.

I have written about Rebecca Vizard’s work and her inspiring book, Once Upon a Pillow in a previous post. Her pillows are used by many designers to provide a point of interest. Here, from her book, is a photo of a room designed by Gerrie Bermermann with a pillow by Rebecca Vizard in the chair. Another photo is of a bed designed by Eleanor Cummings crowned with a Rebecca Vizard pillow. Lately, similar pillows made with vintage pieces are being shown in design shops in the Texas Hill Country.

A very small piece of tea-stained linen purchased from a shop on Magazine Street in New Orleans might be the basis of a pillow of my own! First, a story…the man who owned the shop had a black Scotty dog sitting in a chair beside him at the tremendous old oak desk where he rang up purchases. The dog was growling softly while we talked about the many colorful and broken pieces of pottery he had on the desk top. Each fragment was less than 2 inches in size. He shared that he lived in the French Quarter and told me when he took his dog for a walk in a neighborhood park after a rain he would find these pieces of pottery rising up out of the muddy earth. He laughed and said people used to throw their cracked dishes right out the window and these were the fragments left from dinner parties of long ago.

There was just enough fabric to cut the pillow. The ribbon was first pinned onto the flat pillow front and sewn in place with the idea of framing the “V” with ribbon. The “V” is a vintage piece of passementerie, tiny gold beads sewn onto mesh cut in scallops. Even the back of the fabric where you can see my hand stitching to connect the beaded piece to the pillow front is interesting looking. This little pillow is a welcome addition to our linen covered camel back couch!

Here is a photo of a bit of Christopher Moore’s vintage fabric. He is a fabric collector and designer featured in Lisa Fine’s beautiful book, Near and Far: Interiors I Love. She too is a fabric designer, and with this book takes readers on a journey to see places and meet people who inspire her work.

With a few pieces of vintage fabric or a cabinet full, you can enjoy looking at and touching the pieces from the past, or perhaps, reinventing them in a new form.