Vintage Fabrics Swatch Book

I've been collecting old/vintage fabrics for some time now. I use them as inspiration for work and enjoy simply re-folding and re-stacking them on occasion while the lovely colors and patterns make me smile. After looking at images of antique textile sample books in the online digital collection of one of the major museums (I think it was the Met, but I can't remember), I decided I should create my own book of swatches. Since they have no monetary value to speak of, mounting them in a book seemed like a fine option to me.

i love books + i love textiles = i love love books of textiles

I began by hand sewing them into an acid-free sketchbook, but that was taking far too long to hold my interest, so I've settled on using acid-free glue to mount them. I thought I would share a few pages with any fellow fabric lovers out there.

I'm sorting them by color.

At first, I was going to nicely square up and pink the edges of them all, but many are so small that I would loose a part of the pattern (or repeat if it existed)  if I cut any portion of it off, so I decided to mount them in whatever shape and edges would preserve as much of the pattern as possible. 

Initially, I thought I would just mount all the 30's, 40's, and 50's fabrics together, but then I decided to include the 60's and 70's. Now I'm just calling it my collection of 20th Century Fabric Swatches.

Some of these fabrics I purchased, some were given to me or passed down from others, and I've also taken many from old "cutter" quilts I've found at the flea market, antique malls, and thrift shops. 

I still have many fabrics that I've been unable to bring myself to cut, such as whole flour/feed/sugar sacks.

This is one of the cutter quilt tops I've taken some swatches from. It's not in the greatest condition, but it has a wonderful assortment of  un-faded fabrics. I have taken swatches from old quilt pieces and it's amazing how colorful the fabrics were before the quilts were used and washed again and again. The original color hidden in the seam allowances is a fun surprise!

One of my favorite recent finds was this shoebox of 2" fabric squares which have been hand cut and were obviously destined for some lovely project. There is an assortment of fabrics, but the all appear to be early 1970's and older. They aren't quite big enough to use in my Hexie Charm Quilt, but I won't be able to resist turning them into a postage stamp quilt after I take one of each fabric out for my swatch book.

So, that's what I'm doing with my old fabrics. I've got hundreds of additional bits and pieces I need to press and mount, but I'm just going to take my time and enjoy the process.