...for curtains, blinds and cushions...
The search is real.... you have a fabric
in your mind you want to find for a soft furnishings project and then you fall into an online rabbit hole of google searching for it. Spending hours looking for 'modern floral fabric' , 'contemporary floral fabric', ... nothing too chinzy, nothing tooooo modern.... Hard isn't it? As a fabric designer I started at this place myself , then set myself the task of solving that creative void.
Mission : Floral Fabric
I knew what I wanted... in my head, that's often the hardest part: translating ideas and visions into reality. Getting your hand to draw what you mind sees. But I had good inspiration and reference. A garden full of sunshine and blooms of our own at Willis Bloom HQ to look at, to enjoy and to sketch.
Inspired by Nature
This is what I wanted to design. A modern (not too graphic and not chinzy) floral and foliage design that showed the Blooms and Foliage straight on. Flowers hand drawn but not at a side angle, front facing, bold, beautiful, and uplifting. For curtains and soft furnishings this is really useful as it doesn't matter so much which way you use the fabric: Great for blinds, upholstery and cushions in particular.
After hours spent looking at gardening books I settled on our home grown blooms. These are the starlets that made the final edit along with some fun flowery facts.
Gazania or the ‘Treasure flower’ as she likes to be called. What a beauty indeed with it’s striking daisy like formation. It’s a handy weather forecaster too as it shuts its petals when rain is due. Useful. If you want to give the bees and butterflies a treat too, this open flower is perfect for encouraging our flying friends. What a treasure.
Aquilegia is a charming cottage garden flower, two tone with long, graceful spurs. This little charmer was peeking out of our summer shady border and stopped me in my tracks. Cue: a sketch pad, my pencils, a quiet moment. It’s now a pretty starlet in this design.
Catharanthus roseus ‘periwinkle’ or ‘bright eyes’. Simple and gorgeous but not just a pretty face; this flower is also used in cancer busting drugs. Used in Chinese medicine for centuries to treat a range of ailments from diabetes to depression, most recently this special little plants compounds have been used to battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukaemia.
Eryngium ‘Sea Holly’; when you want a flower with more attitude. Dramatic, spiky, architectural and bloomin’ wonderful.
Hemerocallis ‘Day Lily’; a guaranteed smile in a rainbow choice of colours in a summer border. We love them for their elegance, boldness and abundance of gorgeousness.
Centaurea Montana ‘Carnea’ Cornflower : a rather special cornflower from the type that usually springs to mind when you think of these pretty wild flowers. The Carnea is for when you want some extra flounciness, bounciness and blousiness. (words quite possibly made up…)
Delphinium: are these the ultimate early summer perennial? Quite possibly. You’d be forgiven not recognising this as a Delphinium away from their tall spires of flowers, but I wanted to get up close and personal with just one of these little gems. Sweet on it’s own, but with it’s buddies it packs quite a punch.
Creativity
These modern floral fabric designs are drawn by hand, by me using a humple pencil. But gosh the colours are not humble, they are happy, bright and uplifting. Using a palette of greens, blues, pinks, reds, purple with a dot of red these are created to tie in with beautiful room schemes where a modern floral fabric is just the answer.
Velvet...
oh yes!!! We've been testing soft furnishing velvet and boy oh boy it's looking pretty blooming marvellous... watch this space for an explosion of glorious, strokable, sumptous blooms where the colours just seem to glow.... Can you tell we're excited?! They'll be suitable for curtains, blinds, cushions and upholstery too.
Wallpaper...
... and here's a little update, wallpaper featuring this is on it's way too.....
Where to find it?
This is where you can find a stockist near you 'Willis Bloom Stockists' and these talented folk can also help with creating your soft furnishings too.
Not one near you? that's ok, we can help, just pop us a note or call us Contact us
Thank you
Abigail and Chris Willis
ps) don't forget the foliage....
Often our leafy friends get over looked in favour of the pretty flowers, but these leaves are really rather lovely too. Say hello to 'Foliage' by Willis Bloom.
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