I love flowers and birds, what can I say?
Over the course of my renovation project I have been steadily developing a bit of a problem; a designer fabric addiction that threatened to seriously mess with my limited budget.
When I first started thinking about how I would decorate my flat, I decided (naively) that it would be good to keep decor neutral and use lots of interesting fabrics to brighten things up. I love unusual prints and patterns, especially florals, so this seemed logical. What I didn’t know was that good fabrics are actually quite expensive, especially when you are talking about the kind of quantities you need to, say, upholster a Chesterfield sofa, or make your own curtains for a large bay window (both foolhardy ideas I had at one point, but was forced to abandon due to expense/incompetance at sewing).
It took me a lot of research (googling) to come to this realisation, though, and in the meantime I learnt a few things. The first is that I have REALLY expensive taste in fabric, and became particularly obsessed by the florals and chinoiserie of royal warrant holders GP & J Baker. Just look at their Hydrangea Bird and Peony & Blossum fabrics! Not to mention Oriental Bird. Sigh. The second is that I can’t afford to buy any of these from the usual stockists. They all retail at about £80/metre (e.g. Kingdom Interiors or John Lewis), which soon adds up when you need about 10 metres minimum for your curtains. Ouch.
I also learnt that really nice fabrics do just cost a lot of money, and was very unimpressed by cheaper options out there. Places like B&Q manage to stock lots of nice wallpaper, for example, but largely horrible fabrics, especially if you are after a vintage look (like I was). And, let’s be honest, they have to be an awful lot cheaper that £80/metre to become genuinely affordable for large buys. I had high hopes for John Lewis, and had a rummage through their large fabric collection at the Oxford street store, but wasn’t originally that taken with anything there either.
I did find a few tips for slightly cheaper places to buy designer fabric. Queenshill has some of the GP and J Baker stuff for more like £60/metre, as did Top Designer. There may be others, please share if you find them! Still, this was a bit pricey for what had now turned into my epic quest for amazing living room curtains in particular.
My next port of call was more successful though: Ebay. It turns out there are lots of people on the auction site selling remnants, “fat quarters” and offcuts of designer fabrics. So, I pored over the big designer stockist websites to learn about the kind of things I liked, but then searched for those names on ebay. For example, I’ve found Oriental Bird, Heron and Lotus Flower and others through people like AbFabs05, and Daarling! though the latter appears to have given up, which is a shame. There are also sellers, such as RedHoney66, who sell ready made cushions and the like in these beautiful fabrics, at pretty reasonable prices.
It’s not just about the one designer, though, along the way, I’ve found some lovely Designer’s Guild stuff, Romo, Lee Jofa and Sanderson have some interesting vintage-y prints, as do Jane Churchill and of course Liberty, all of which turn up on Ebay.
So, I’ve now built up quite a collection of offcuts, mainly GP & J Baker, which I bought for a fraction of their worth per metre on Ebay. Obviously none of these big enough to make my massive living room curtains, though I did pick up a large amount of vintage GP & J Baker Firebird for only about £30 which will make several smaller curtains or blinds. The other offcuts will be cushions, draught excluders, and maybe chair seats, so I can get that designer feel on smaller items. Well, that’s the idea, I think what has really happened is that I’ve become a slightly obsessive collector of these fabrics, which I just love to look at even if I never use them for anything.
One final option, if you are feeling very creative you could always design your own fabric and get it printed by someone like Spoonflower. I had a go at this for a sample and was really impressed with the quality of the print.
In case you are wondering, my curtain dilemma was solved, after a whole year of searching, by the appearance of Bayswater Gold on the John Lewis Made to Measure Curtain list, which I’d either missed or is new, and my wonderful new curtains arrived two days ago. My hunt for Peony and Blossum in the green colourway, or Hydrangea Bird on the yellow, though, still continues…
Fixing It Up 