Red Toile Y'all

A little personal history on toile...

I am southern and toile is most definitely the first pattern I ever remember falling in love with, so much that the first major sewing project I took on in college was creating my own duvet cover for my junior year apartment. It was made of three wonky panels. Not one bit of the pattern aligned, and I thought it was awesome.

Fast forward through design school and somewhere along the way, probably at the first architecture firm I worked for, someone shamed me out of my love of toile. Probably the same architect who temporarily shamed me out of liking drapery (drapery, seriously!? that's like saying drywall is ugly). Apparently I was easily influenced in my early twenties.

Fast forward again to earlier this summer and my coffee shop client and I are having a design charette and she tells me she wants the interior to feel "country." I will admit, I was scared at first. I had no idea what her definition of country was. She is from Montana, which is country, but not the same kind of country I am from. We also live in Boston, where 99% of the people do not associate themselves with the word "country" in any way shape or form. But as we worked through schematic design there was one thing "country" that we both loved, that apparently makes people feel cozy on the inside whether you are from the deep South or the Midwest and that is toile! And what's more fun is, I feel like we are being bold by using toile in Boston, especially in a coffee shop and I love it. It definitely has the potential to feel more kitschy than country, but I'm equally excited about that possibility.

 As of last week we were here...

 So excited to see this one progress!