How To Give a Luxury Fabric a Vintage Look

With vintage inspired fashions becoming the rave today, a vintage, or vintage inspired luxury fabric has found a comfortable spot in the fashion style and crafting industry around the world, but most especially in North America and Europe.

Vintage inspired fabrics have always been viewed by luxury fabric collectors and fashion designers as great works of art, and therefore old vintage fabrics should be well appreciated and preserved as much as is possible.

Finding vintage, or, vintage inspired fabrics is not as difficult as a number of people believe, and there are several websites, including eBay that specialize in vintage fabrics. Online seems to be the best place for such finds.

These luxury fabrics can be made to sew authentic vintage apparel, curtains, or, decorative pieces, which in a way, will preserve the authenticity of vintage themes and designs.

You will especially find brightly coloured luxury fabrics with geometric patterns that depict the retro era of the 1960's and a variety of mod dress designs can be made from these. There are also large floral prints from the late 60's and the 1970's that can be used to make a pair of the famous bell bottom pants.

A vintage print luxury fabric can also be used to make special gowns, suits, skirts and even vintage inspired bridal dresses, curtains or upholstery.

VINTAGE PRINT LUXURY FABRICS

The point is that you can always make something unique and different from the high street styles, nice and wearable from vintage fabrics.

Many collectors of vintage items do collect scraps of the fabrics by putting them in an album as a form of memorabilia; a relic from the past. These can be posted in an album with plastic sleeves to be referred to later,

Some are so special, maybe small swatches of fabrics from the times of your grand or great grandparents and can be specially framed in vintage style frames and displayed by hanging them on the wall.

A beautiful piece of luxury fabric is a great way to decorate empty wall spaces in your home. You can hang beautifully woven tapestry works, luxurious Japanese kimono silks or delicate and intricate lacework set off with a coloured background.

On the other hand, you may have a good large piece of fabric, and haven't decided what to do with it. While pondering on what you may want to make, make sure you store the fabric in low-moisture areas, to prevent moulding, or mildew attacks.

If you have a fetish for vintage fabrics, and you cant lay your hands on any, you may prefer to 'age' fabrics so as to give a vintage appearance and the look of the early to mid 20th century.

This you can also do quite easily, but lacy luxury fabrics, voile or a predominantly cotton mix fabric are the best to make look vintage.

To achieve the vintage look and produce your own luxury fabric, purchase material by the yard (or metre) from online stores, or a fabric discount store in your locality, and follow these tips methodically.

You will need the following to achieve this task.

Regular tea bags

1 gallon of water to 2 yards (or 2 metres) of fabric

• Now, boil 6 teabags per gallon of water.
• Leave the tea to cool down until warm
• Put the cotton cloth in the tea solution, and leave it in to soak well
• If you require just a light staining, let it sit in the solution for 6 hours
• For a medium stain, its good to let it soak in the solution for 12hours
• If you want maximum staining, let it sit for approximately 24hours

The preferable colours of luxury fabrics to use is white, or a very pale coloured fabric. The results you will get is a vintage fabric look alike.

However, because some of the staining will remove with consecutive washes, you may use want to use a couple more tea bags than suggested. This will give you a darker tea solution, and thus a vintage luxury fabric.

Be creative and ensure that the appropriate fabric is chosen for staining, depending on the end use. You can make lovely chair covers, pretty napkins, a vintage blouse, a lace collar for a special dress, bridal veils, patchwork or small craft projects, or anything that you fancy and want, to have a vintage look and feel.

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