From the Roll to the Rails

All of our designs use waste fabrics that would have been burnt or sent to landfill, so my job is to make something luxurious out of something old and discarded. When fabrics arrive in our workshop from their old homes, my eye is immediately drawn to the range of colours and textures that I can work with and pairings that might work. From there, I get to decide what fringe or piping will then go on to produce a final luxury cushion design.

Obviously, there are always fabrics that you are most attracted to due to your own personal taste and style, so a big task for me is managing all the fabrics with equal attention so we can get the best out of each one. Given that we have been able to save these fabrics from the scrapheap, I never want to waste a fabric that we have been given to us; we pride ourselves on being a sustainable small business, so we are constantly on the lookout for new designs, making use of smaller and smaller offcuts of fabric. 

At Oath Home we focus on transforming unwanted fabrics to luxury, high-end finished products, from then we decide if that certain fabric, whether it’s velvet, silk, cotton, or any of the myriad of fabrics that cross our threshold, will work best as a cushion, stocking, face mask, door stop or perhaps something completely new. Because of the nature of how we come by fabrics, each piece can be utterly unique - we don’t have to worry about planning a manufacturing run of 5000 units.

Last week, for example, one of our industry suppliers dropped off some offcuts from a costume workshop and I was able to use just a few inches of beautiful pleated lace to create a trim for a silk Christmas stocking.

I find that choosing the finishing on a fabric will eventually implement how the product will end up looking, this could either be fringing, piping or actually leaving the fabric to work on its own without adding anything to it. Sometimes simple works and on other occasions I find that pairing a less interesting fabric with something brighter can create a beautifully balanced piece.

My thought behind every step I take in designing our products is what our clients might like in their home: rich, embellished and tactile; sumptuous, decadent and opulent; or maybe simple, clean and elegant – our clients have varied tastes and styles, so our products need to reflect that.