5 Ways to Use Fabrics in the Home

5 Ways to Use Fabrics in the Home

Soft furnishings and upholstery may represent the bulk of your fabric use throughout the home, but it offers a far more versatile medium than that. Exploring colour and texture through our full range of fabrics opens up an entirely new world of possibilities.

Add depth and dimension to your spaces, do the unexpected, and integrate influences from across the globe into your home with these ideas.

Store bolts in the open

There’s something casually chic about bolts of fabric, with that ragged selvedge and cardboard inserts just visible from the centre. Fabric that is still waiting to be used is a little like a beautiful cake waiting to be cut – a focal point in and of itself, whether it only lasts a few days or a few hours.

For that reason, a basket spilling over with fabric awaiting the sewing table – or a shelf stacked high with bolts – is a wonderful statement in and of itself. Offering a casual, timeless charm on a par with the open coffee table book or the blanket strewn elegantly over a well-dressed sofa, a beautiful piece of fabric offers a decorative flourish long before it sees the needle and thread.

Mount a larger piece in a tapestry frame…

Not all tapestries need to be a densely woven tryptic depicting Tudor nobles or the Palace of Versailles in muted, 14th century shades of sepia and sienna and umber. They can be celebrations of colour and print, a way of showcasing a beautiful example of textile inspired by another, far-flung part of the world, and a unique alternative to a feature painting or photograph.

A lot of the time, when we come across a beautiful fabric, we immediately start thinking about ways to use it when, really, we never need an excuse – an appreciation for print, colour and texture is more than enough.

…or smaller cut-offs in embroidery hoops

Embroidery hoops are designed to hold fabric taught, and to create a stiff frame so that, when the embroiderer works, there is no buckling or creasing in the fabric.

While they are primarily there to serve a practical purpose, they also make for a beautiful, simple, ready-made piece of décor even if you have no needlework skills yourself. It’s a little like framing a beautiful print but doing so in a way that makes the most of the fabric’s texture.

Embroidery hoops come in all sizes, and interspersing the rest of your prints – or creating a feature wall solely from hooped off-cuts – with various sizes is one of the easiest ways to showcase a growing collection of beautiful textiles.

Alternatively, for much larger pieces of fabric, consider mounting them in picture frames – or combine the two, and contrast the circles and squares with botanical and illustrated textiles.

Layer fabrics on clothes horses, ladders, and decorative chairs

Creating a sense of artful clutter around the home will never stop representing one of our favourite ways to capture a sense of motion. Antique wooden clothes horses can be found all over the place, and offer the perfect support for any fabrics that deserve to be displayed around the home. Failing that, a rustic chair or wooden ladder propped against the wall will offer the same benefit.

Experiment with layering these fabrics – with combining prints and patterns and colours in a way that looksunintentional, even if there were hours of intention behind it.

Embrace a year-round celebration with bunting

Nothing screams ‘rustic country cottage’ like bunting festooning the beams, strung from one corner of the room to the other, zigzagging across the ceiling and flowing from room to room. Yes, it may not be the most original trend for the countryside home but, no matter how many iterations we come across, it never loses its power to invoke a sense of perennial celebration and joie de vivre, even on the dreariest of days.

The best part is, of course, the fact that bunting can be fashioned from any fabrics you fall for. Small, leftover scraps can be combined in the ultimate explosion of texture, pattern, and colour – sewn back-to-back, or arranged in a long pattern that extends from the kitchen to the garden and back again – or a single, statement fabric can be utilized across the entire string for something a little more understated.

Bunting can be used to add a little extra creativity and fun into the playroom, to ring in the changes of a new season, or simply to add a little extra colour and life to a room, or to.