Susan, how do you choose the colors for your patterns? Do you follow fashion trends?

We try to not follow color trends, but intuitively follow/create our own colors based on seasons, emotion and style. We do think about how a pattern will fall into the [existing] collection so color plays an important role when choosing with that parameter or structure.

However, fashion does inspire me. I think it’s because I am often not inspired by the subtleties of the home market where everything is washed out. Colors in fashion more often catch your eye, so it does play an important role when doing research for interior fabrics. We want to stand out in the home market and create patterns that designers remember, especially because it’s such a vast and competitive market.

What was your inspiration for the new patterns?

The three patterns (Ball + Chain, Birds, Trellis) were all inspired at different times and under different circumstances.

The Ball+Chain was a fusion between two very different cultures, and also those that I personally love: Scandinavian and Japanese. I love the scale and rows of balls and chains. I can envision this print being applied to curtains. I couldn’t wait to see it printed once back from the mill.

The Birds Print was a long time coming. It’s been lingering here for a while and I didn’t want it to fall into the birds craze, but I couldn’t control the timing clearly! It’s a soaring bird that will be re-colored in some wild palettes in the future. My hope is that it will become a timeless motif and pattern someday.

The Trellis is also a pattern that has been on the burner for a while. I spotted a gorgeous, stately rose pattern of a jacquard fabric on a sofa in Italy many years ago. I’ve never stopped thinking about it and now it’s has finally crept into our collection! I wanted it to be read simply as a print, so I decided to solely place emphasis on simple lines in the design. It’s starting its long life here and I have big plans for it.

Where are your fabrics made?

Our fabrics are screen-printed by hand in Rhode Island. We support a factory that still hand-prints all of the fabrics and uses a vat dye process. There are men and women screen-printers! All of our other products (with the exception of the wool felt collection) are made in the U.S.

I love your appliqu?©d pillows. Where did the idea for using appliqu?© come from?

We decided to try our hand at appliqu?© after seeing how beautiful the technique looked when executed by a women‚Äôs cooperative in Hungary. There was no plan before seeing the work. We met a nice couple whose mission was to work with these women and support them, so we decided to give it a try.

The technique is traditional to their culture. They use hammers and chisels to complete the designs. That technique and idea was a great fit with our design target and aesthetic. There was no strategy here except for the price point falling in line with our collection and color palette complementing our collection. The result exceeded our craftsmanship and aesthetic expectations!!! A new collection was born.

Do you have a design strategy for Hable Construction’s look?

We do have a design strategy, even though we never phrase it as such. We focus on creating unique and fresh, usable patterns for the use of fabrics in residential design. We also develop patterns for finished products that we manufacture primarily in the United States.

We look first in the U.S. for manufacturing before looking elsewhere. Manufacturing is as important to us as the art itself. It also defines us. We have a core group of patterns that are re-colored periodically for some freshness, but we try to build on our collection by adding three to four new patterns yearly.

Where can we purchase your fabrics? Are they sold solely through design showrooms?

Yes, showrooms!  Here’s the link to all of the showrooms. Our fabrics are available to the trade only. The exception is that sometimes we’ll have sample sales and sell remnants and discontinued fabrics at various venues during specific times of the year in limited styles and prints. The best way to be notified of these sales is to sign up on our mailing list. You can visit this link to be added to the list:

We have about 12 showrooms that carry our fabrics. Plus, we just joined the George Smith showroom in the U.K. There is an online resource for our fabric. Decorati is great! They put the public in touch with designers, so it’s a great resource if you’re not a part of the trade, but need resources to get you access!

Fabric pricing is only available to the trade. So if you’re a designer, you can call a showroom and ask about specific fabric pricing. The fabric CANNOT be purchased through our website. We just list info about the fabrics here.

Susan thanks for taking the time to talk to us about your inspiration and for giving us a behind the scenes look at Hable Construction’s beautiful designs.

If anyone is interested in purchasing fabrics from Hable Construction, you can email me via the contact link. Let me know the town you live in (for shipping charges) and the quantity you need. I’ll send you a quote.

Personally, I love Ball+Chain. What’s your favorite?

UPDATE: I just received and email from Hable. They’re offering a nice discount (30%) on all their merchandise. Enter the code MARCH at checkout. Cheers!

Here’s my 5-color Suzani.

Sadly, my ultra-refined sense of design (dahlink) must wait for the company to enable screening. Right now they print only 4-color. (A screen creates a lighter color of the purple on top of the purple but uses the same color.) So I submitted a 4-color version, as well as a 2-color.

Here’s my 4-color Suzani.

I removed the gray and lilac. Do you think it makes a big difference?

Keep your fingers crossed for me! I want curtains for Chum Bucket with this print!

The Suzani pattern is by Rubelli. It’s sold by Bergamo Fabrics.

Gotta get a price on it later today.

Here’s how it works. You choose the pattern, then add your favorite background and foreground colors to create your own custom fabric. Currently the color choices are limited to two, but a little Hawaiian bird told me they’re working on four-color.

You can also order a matching pendant light fixture and pillows.

Don’t you love our new global market? This was a laughable dream only five years ago.

I designed two similar sets of draperies from both companies. Here are the details.

The tab-top curtains (on the left) are from Smith+Noble. They’re made with a 100% linen fabric (below, left), and are lined with a privacy lining. No details were given as to the fabric content. The tab-top curtains (on the right) are from The Natural Curtain Co. These are also made with a 100% linen fabric (below, right) and are lined in 100% cotton.

The price? Smith+Noble’s price is $692, which includes shipping within the contiguous US. The Natural Curtain Company’s curtains are $321. Add $98 for 2 – 4 day delivery to the US and the total price comes to $419.

The Natural Curtain Company wins by $273, or 40%.

Which would you buy?

Don’t answer yet! Here are some more details to help you decide. Both companies offer a free swatch service. Smith+Noble will give you ten. The Natural Curtain Co. sends six. Both have similar headings to choose from (though Smith+Noble has more) and both offer a variety of linings. Their return policies are the same and they both offer good customer support if you have questions.

However, I found three major differences (other than the price) worth noting:

Fabrics: On Smith+Noble’s side, they have a much larger selection of fabrics. The Natural Curtain Co. offers fewer choices, but I really liked them. they get an A+ on taste. Their natural fabrics are very well edited (see a small sampling, below). Both sites offer their fabrics by the yard.

Trims: Smith+Noble offers lots of trims and lots of ways to apply them. That’s a definite plus. The Natural Curtain Co. doesn’t have trim, but they will add a border if you call or email. Smith+Noble wins here.

Ease of Ordering: I have to say the The Natural Curtain Co’s site is extremely well organized and gets a solid PASS on this. They just need to add their prices in US dollars so customers don’t need to do their own conversion. Smith+Noble’s site was so confusing it made me jittery. Example? I assumed my curtains would be made as a pair. Not so on both sites. But TNC Co. (I’m getting tired of typing that long name) read my mind and asked me if I wanted a set or just one. I had to go searching at S+N to find the scoop.

Time to vote

Who wins? My vote (if you couldn’t guess) goes to The Natural Curtain Company. (And, just for the record, I’m not being paid for my rant/rave.) I might order a set of grommet-headed draperies for Chum Bucket from this company. I like their price and in a rental property that’s what rules.

How about you? Which company do you prefer?

To find out how it works:

Go to their support page for all the details. Here are the basics.

Open a ticket with your pattern as an attachment.¬† They’ll have a look at it, consider whether they think it’s a good fit for, and if they like it, they’ll notify you via email.

Here’s what you get:

They’ll add your bio to their website linked from the pattern, include your pattern in at least one bulk email to their customer list (it’s pretty big), and Twitter your pattern.¬† “You can add a link to your company, your blog, anything (as long as it is not offensive!).¬† We’ll also give you a $150 gift code that you can use to buy fabric by the foot, a lamp shade, or whatever you like—if you want cash, we’ll give you $75 (via Paypal).”

At Alluminare you can design your own lampshades and pillows using their patterns. (They also have other fabrics and trims to choose from). You choose the pattern and 2 colors from their palette. As I mentioned, they’re also offering fabric by the yard. So you can match them up, or do a lampshade one way and the fabric with the colors reversed.

Why I Like This Service

I found Alluminare a while back when I was trying to find a place that could make a custom lampshade from fabric I was also using for some curtains. The prices I found were prohibitive. Alluminare got in touch with me, as they were just launching their custom program. It was too late for my project, but what a find.

Now I can design a lampshade and matching curtains that won’t cost a fortune. Yay!

My dreams would really come true if (and when) they expand the printing options to run a three-color pattern. Wallpaper would also be nice.

Right now I’m working on a Suzani pattern. I hope they like it. Hello fame and fortune!

I admire her bravery in leaving a steady job to follow her dream. That takes a lot of guts. Talent helps a lot, too. Suzanne told me yesterday that in her “former life” she worked in the fashion industry, which involved a daily 6 hour commute into New York. “But,” she explained, “it was on those long train rides back and forth each day…that the idea of starting my own business was born.”

“At the beginning of June with an idea in place, I resigned and started on this new phase in my life. In just six months I went from a seed of an idea, to setting up a workshop, creating the products, and launching the site. It has been an exhilarating process ..a feat that sometimes amazes me” Me too.

Her passion is her chairs. The shape of the chair is her starting point. Then she decides which base fabric to use, cotton, silk or hemp. Color selection comes next.

“Then the really hard part starts,” says Suzanne. “I stare at the unpainted fabric and will inspiration to come to my fingertips. Sometimes I paint test pieces and lay them against the chair to get a feeling for proportion. Somehow the design just clicks in my head and I start to paint. Some of the pieces take up to 2 days to paint so it’s very labour intensive.”

I really like Suzanne’s pareos, made of silk chiffon. They’d look great at the beach, but I’d use them as a soft window treatment, or as an ornamental accent throw on a chair. Chum Bucket (my rental beach house) could use one of these.

Good luck to Suzanne and her new enterprise. You can find her work at her site, Blugirl Art, and at Vintage and Modern.

They both had careers, but having grown up during the depression, they, like others of their generation, didn’t spend money if they could help it. When you needed something, you made it yourself.

Denyse started making things when she was little and never stopped. She studied graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design, and had “more than a few” different careers over the years. Ten years ago she was able to create a full-time business making her wonderful quilts.

Bridgeport, Connecticut is where Denyse makes her home now. Each of her Couture quilts is made to order, hand-quilted by Amish craftswomen and signed and dated by Denyse. Pre-washed cotton fabrics are used, and personal fabrics preferences such as a favorite shirt, may be incorporated into any design. Cool!

Denyse Schmidt Works Collection (which includes the Rugby Stripe, above) is a collection of machine quilted, modern quilts and pillows made in her Bridgeport studio. The machine quilting creates a unique look: a combination of sleek/industrial and warm/handmade.

The machine quilting is durable, and affords a faster lead-time than their couture quilts. She likes to say the quilts are ’factory built’ in honor of the historic building where her studio is located, but she and her team  still make them one at a time.

If you’re lucky enough to live in the area, you can sign up to take a workshop class at her studio (again, in Bridgeport). You can also buys her line of fabrics and, if you’re a quilter, check out some of her books. They’re all online at Denyse’s shop.

And now everyone knows what I want for Christmas. ;-)