For the love of French homespun linen, part 1...

This may very well be the first of several posts on my feelings towards homespun linen over the course of this blog. My experience with it over the years of having a shop where we specialized in French textiles, and being exposed to the weight, weave and texture of this fabric, has made it my very favorite textile. I was first introduced to it by my uncle's then wife who is French and is responsible for exposing me to the world of antique textiles in the first place. We bought and sold the large sheets, some of which had monograms in red. There would be a small hand embroidered monogram in one of the corners, not more than a square inch or so, or there would be a large monogram/double monogram in the lower center of the sheet with one letter on each side of the seam. Most of these sheets would only be about 76" wide, comprised of two approximately 36-38" wide lengths hand sewn together. This hem that ran down the sheet (which varied from 76 - 116" in length), was sewn in such a way that it would be nearly impossible for the two lengths to become separated. The hemp 'threads' as you will were more like jute string, and the stitches so close and tight together, that even with a seam ripper the task, should one want to separate the panels to put the fabric to some other use, is extremely tedious. The strength of the stitching is very much successful in keeping the sheet in tact for a very long time...

Shown here is one of the ways we put this incredible fabric to use, as custom draperies for a client's pool house. The challenge of this job was not the actual sewing - just some hemming at the bottom to accommodate the height of the rod - but having enough sheets in a similar enough color to use together, side by side. We needed a total of 8 sheets, and with working with such an organic, natural fabric, color tones of the sheets varied from a subtle off-white/sand to an almost camel/tan/wheat color. Here the beauty of using homespun linen as drapes can be seen in the way this fabric hangs, the texture of the weave filtering the sunlight, the contrast to the Spanish style wrought iron rods/brackets/finials, all working together to produce a wonderful effect and ambiance.