Stroheim trim

Custom Drapery Designs delights in the importance and prominence of texture in design. This lovely detail transforms a flat design to a multi-dimensional experience; and, many times, accessories offer the best examples of texture.

During Brenda Baxter’s trip to Paris in September, she collected new and exciting products with which to add extra dimensions to future designs. (See last month’s blog sharing some of the inspiration she brought back across the ocean.) Her hotel even got her creative juices flowing and inspired her to snap this photo while resting from her walking tours of the city. Hotel d’Aubusson may very well inspire some upcoming designs! The lobby boasts magnificent elegant draperies which perfectly complement the rustic beams. And, ideally placed accessories bring it all together to make a perfectly-designed package.

Art provides a great starting point for adding depth to a design. Like we saw last time, many fabrics are art pieces in themselves and create an extra dimension or make a fantastic statement to set a room apart. This lovely example of Graffiti Art fabric from Jean Paul Gaultier adds a pop of modern flair to an older furniture style. This chair coupled with a solid drapery background brings both elegance and fashion to any room.

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Brenda browsed several showrooms in Paris, including Èlitis. She was particularly drawn to their Artémis and Algaé collections with larger-than-life prints on cotton-linen mix sheers. These flowy fabrics provide the perfect canvas for
watercolor-inspired designs. Artémis brings a pop of color through its detailed flowers. Algaé mimics the colors and shapes of elements in nature from lily pads on a pond to moss encircling a great tree to the variations in color shades in the waters in a lake. These collections bring the outdoors in and add the illusion of stepping into a magical spot somewhere in the great expanse of nature. Close your eyes and you can almost hear the mystical notes of fairies and dryads.

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Pillows, throws and rugs join art as great starting points for a design. Custom pillows can mimic the colors and textures of a room’s draperies and add depth and warmth to any space. These lovely pillows on display in the Lelievre Paris showroom show the range of possible options with this accessory—dark colors, light colors, patterned, simple, decorated with tassels and trims…the possibilities are as varied as people and their styles! Lelievre embraces the history of fabrics and carries those ideals into modern times with rich, luxurious fabrics and sensuous silks paired brilliantly with timeless solids.

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Pairing more busy patterns with solids offers great design potential. And, don’t shy away from lighter colors…even white or off-white—be prepared to hear much more on that in 2016! Also, check out these simply elegant stonewashed linen pillows from the Èlitis Veda collection. We love the contrast of the deep violet with the white and the detailed decorative stitching along the seams—simply making a statement! A careful mixture of textiles adds dimension to a room as well. A great design can mix and match silks, linens and velvets through the use of properly-placed accessories. The depth and added dimension multiple fabric types bring to design opens the door to a new horizon for interior styles. Pairing rugs and throws that play off one another in texture and style pumps up a design.

Stroheim trim

During a recent installation, Custom Drapery Designs chose some new trimmings from Stroheim to add some custom pizzazz to a room. Brenda chose this Nuage in Moss trimming by Charles Faudree. An interior designer and philanthropist, Faudree passed away in 2013; but not before making a great impact on the design community. Within his collection on Stroheim’s website he is quoted as saying, “You can have a lot invested in throw pillows with trims and fringes. But, it’s the frosting on the cake; the detail that really makes a room…it’s important.”

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While touring the Èlitis showroom in Paris, Brenda swooned over their decorative pillows. She looks forward to using a number of them in upcoming designs. These “art pieces,” as she refers to them,  come in a variety of sizes, highlighting the company’s signature large patterns and solids with tiny lip cord accents that add a signature finishing touch. It’s these exquisite couture details that Custom Drapery Designs seeks out for our clients and their designs. It’s in life’s little details that the greatest beauty often lies.

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One final way to achieve great depth in design is through textured walls. That’s right—texture comes across in way more than fabrics! Stamped wallcoverings, like this one from Èlitis, simply tie a room all together and add depth in a surprisingly refreshing way. These wallcoverings feature “natural plant materials in wood, bamboo and paper mâché” and create “a world of walls made up of simplicity and sophistication.”

While modern technologies allow many new textiles and colors and patterns, handmade items retain their unique values. Clients do not mind waiting for fabrics that are hand-painted or hand-sewn. Handmade rugs, like we saw in a previous post, are in high demand. The stories behind these pieces and the obvious attention to detail in the work make for timeless additions to any room’s design. Join us next time for a closer look at the beauty of handmade textiles and get ready to chat with some industry leaders whose commitment to handmade captured CDD’s attention.

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Manipulating fabric and focusing on details

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Next time you’re browsing through fabric, look past the silk, satin and cotton and visualize something different, something uniquely YOU! One of our favorite fellow drapery designers and personal friend with The Wendel Works in Houston, Texas, inspired just that in the stunning gold drapery you see in the right-hand corner of the collage above. She cross-stitched and pleat tucked the rich fabric to create her own fabric, adding mini pearls for that little something extra. This drapery heading is an excellent example of the art of manipulating fabrics to create a brand new style. She took something beautiful in itself and turned it into an extraordinary window adornment with all the elegance of a royal wedding while maintaining the comfort of home.

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Successful manipulation of fabric can be achieved by a multitude of design tricks. You could make a bold block statement by horizontally splicing together yards of color silk fabrics or create multiple layers of horizontal folds.  Design or stencil a custom or Celtic band on your drapery’s hem for another unique option.

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Or, take a tip from the runway: laser cutting. This technique, known well to anyone in metal work, burns away the material leaving a surprisingly high-quality finished edge and a plethora of designs. The endless expanse of your imagination is the only limit when it comes to manipulating fabric!

In design, details don’t just matter; often they make the project. For this reason Custom Drapery Designs, LLC strives to seek out the best and most current trends in design “bling!” Kravet’s new Modern Metal and Crystals hardware collection will add a little pop to the top of your drapery and includes five finial shapes and four finishes: polished nickel, satin nickel, mercury and satin gold. Diamondhead upholstery tack offers a new and exciting way to incorporate some summer sparkle to just about any surface in your home. These aren’t just any nails—they shimmer with genuine Bohemian crystals from the Czech Republic and luster art glass cabochon stones. And, they can be applied to many projects including mirror or art frames, room dividers, walls, cabinets, tables, cornice boxes and—as seen in the collage above—headboards and footboards.

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We look forward to marrying that last use with our new product—bedding! We are excited to offer more options for your home within the windows as we team up with Eastern Accents. They create both traditional and contemporary bedding in addition to Italian fine linens, many styles of pillows and holiday décor. This company gives a great American dream story as they have grown since 1989 from the vision of a husband-and-wife team with one designer and two sewers to a booming 300+ employee business in the heart of Chicago. The Portia Collection, their new 2012 spring look included in our collage, is one example of the details Eastern Accents engages from bedding to pillows to throws to drapery and so much more. Wrap yourself up and snuggle down in new design all around your bedroom this season!

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And last, but certainly not least, showcase watercolor art in your designs with Bluebellgray, a Scottish textile design company. As their website shows, Bluebellgray is “influenced by a love of colour and all things floral; the designs are something unique and special, each design is painted by hand in the Bluebellgray studio before being printed onto natural cottons and linens using state of the art printing technology. The printing methods used by Bluebellgray enable every brushstroke and colour to be captured enhancing the feel of the hand painted design.” To design an art lover’s oasis, check out Bluebellgray’s inspirational line.

Custom Drapery Designs, LLC

Custom Drapery Designs, LLC, serves Dallas and the surrounding metroplex with all aspects of a custom design project. From in-home consultation to project management to exquisite couture details to a perfect installation, we do it all. 

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Monday – Friday: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

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