All About Looks

All About Looks was an awesome "field trip" during class. This fabric store had unique variety of fabrics, accessories, and drapery hardware. Although this trip was meant for learning purposes, it was like a playground in this store to me!

This mother daughter team taught many different things about all kinds of fabrics and their uses and also about the fibers that make up these fabrics. While this store carries higher end fabrics, they could still point out all of the different fibers and what their appropriate uses were for. For instance, the Ralph Lauren burlap fabric they showed us was absolutely gorgeous although very expensive. This fabric would not be appropriate upholstered on a chair however. As they were talking about wallpapers coming back in style I was very intrigued by the wallpaper which could be painted on and had designs in the texture. That was really cool and I had yet to see that before. Another very interesting fabric they showed was the fabrics made out of reusable items such as the fabric made from old tarps and also the fabric made from cork. Both of these materials had a very interesting and unique texture and look to it that could really add to an interior.

Another thing that was very interesting during this trip was getting to see how they upholster old furniture. I never thought about how older furniture is actually of better quality because it is made with hard wood instead of more modern furniture which is made with cheaper materials until they pointed this out. Refinishing older furniture is something that I am very interested in so I loved getting to see it in action!

All About Looks was a very valuable learning experience because I not only got to learn about different fabrics and applications, but I also got to learn about how designers work together with upholsterers and fabric stores.