Favorites from my vintage stash

Today, the penultimate day of another year nearly spent, the waning solstice moon hanging mid-sky at dawn, and now a cold and bright December afternoon, today seemed like a good day to post pictures of a few items from my vintage fabric collection.  

Especially now near the winter solstice I think of the lineage of women, stretching back from us to our grandmothers back to olden historical times, then further back through ancient history and pre-history, women sitting at their work by a fire during the dark and cold months, preparing beautiful things to bring delight to mundane needs and tasks.

To me, these flea market textiles are treasured relics, records of the dreams of the women whose hands created them, links to the ones who went before. 

At one recent flea market a vendor gave me a whole big box of embroidered household linens for $20, because she didn't want to go to the trouble of sorting, laundering, and labeling everything for sale.  Joy! 

My all-time favorite flea market find, this pillowcase is a mystery to me- the pink and black rays are printed, not pieced.

The taffeta face was backed with homespun before embroidering.

Who thought of this?  and Why?

Here are a few of my favorite hand-embroidered table linens- tablecloths, runners, doilies, scarves,  napkins:
 

I haven't figured out yet why this piece captivates me so.

Shades

Beautiful embroidered linen

Here's a handful of recent shades:

Brunschwig "On Point" with bullion fringe

Sheer embroidered linen, unlined

A ho-hum photo of a pretty Austrian shade

Please excuse the poor showing this shade makes in this photo- I was in a hurry and had no time to take a nice shot of this actually very beautiful Austrian shade.  And you can see I didn't have time to dress it at all, either- the flowers look all random but they aren't really, really!  They're just hidden in the messy folds.  I'm hoping the decorator will send me a pic once she's installed it!

Yes, it does bow in slightly.  That's one of the idiosyncracies of Austrian shades. Since I was rushing, I made no attempt to straighten it out for this picture; it will look straighter once it's dressed.

Funny thing about Austrian shades.  I might not get a call for them for, like, two years, then three different people will ask about them.  That's what has happened this month, so we'll see if the other two orders come through.  I hope so!  I love making them. 

They're like magic- yards and yards of just fabric, transformed into the most elegant and graceful of window treatments with the simplest of techniques.  They are spectacular whether one section, like this one, or a whole wall full of shirring. 

At triple fullness in length, however,  it is a lot of work to do all that shirring and believe me, my hands and arms get tired making a big Austrian shade, and the shirring has to be carefully distributed so that it's consistent all the way across all the sections.

Well, let's hope that there will be more to show you in the coming weeks!

Gorgeous shades!

A workroom shot of one of the two shades, mounted for testing, partly raised.  How do you like the pattern layout? 

Embroidery always leaves the fabric puckered and sometimes it's impossible to iron out.  But I'm totally in love with my latest Rowenta- that pointy nose is HOT and gets right in between the embroidery and irons out even the tiniest wrinkles.  The iron's wider "belly" was also useful for pressing sideways into a rippled section, sort of tricking it into flatness.
All this silk/viscose blend fabric had to be ironed first from the right side then turned over and ironed to size from the wrong side and then ironed again with the interlining, and then again with the lining- about an hour of ironing per shade before the sewing even starts! 

Can you believe this is the nursery scale that John's mom used when he was a baby?  John weighed a lot less than this shade!  We weighed everything to be sure we could use a slim clutch since there was little space for mounting these very wide shades so we couldn't use a regular 30# Rollease clutch.  The scale says 10 pounds, including the weight rod, face fabric, lining, and interlining, and the clutch components- whew!  the slim clutch can handle 15 pounds.   

There was not enough fabric to use three cuts per shade, and we had only 1/4" over on each side for the side hems, so we used an alternative construction technique, adapting a method from English interlined panel fabrication: the interlining was layered over the face fabric and both were folded over together, then the lining laid on top and ironed down just 1/8" or less from the edge- just wide enough to get a skinny needle into the space- and the sides were blind-hemmed by hand with itty bitty stitches.  It was tempting to just whip stitch the sides but in the end it was only a couple of extra minutes to do a blind hem, and I don't have to feel guilty!  That narrow bit of face fabric looks so nice, like a microcording.  I can think of a few situations where I might use this technique again.

The decorator just called to report that the shades look fabulous in her client's home and that they are very happy with them- yay!  I'm SO thrilled.  I don't know if folks realize how personal these projects are to us workrooms- a little piece of us goes into every job and we agonize over the decisions we have to make during fabrication.  I love hearing when one of my products has made someone happy!