April, 1916 
FABRICS AS FRESH AS 
SPRING ITSELF 
AGNES FOSTER 
53 
Are you in doubt as to what color schemes to use in your new 
rooms, or what fabrics and furnishings in your spring refur¬ 
bishing? Ask Miss Foster, House & Garden, 440 Fourth 
Avenue, New York. She will serve you without charge. 
Fabrics and articles shown here can be purchased through 
the House & Garden Shopping Service 
yellow and black pheasants on guard over a 
tall palmetto tree in purple and black. A butter¬ 
fly and tree are carried out in old rose. The 
whole is decorative and interesting in the extreme, 
as well as most usable in any large room either 
on furniture or as window hangings. This same 
A heavy cretonne suit¬ 
able for wicker; 50" 
xoide $3.75 
A Sir Walter Raleigh linen in 
blue, green and tan; 50" wide, 
$2.75 a yard 
For a man's room, a linen 
depicting The Canterbury 
Tales; 50" wide, $2.85 a yard 
N ECESSITY lias again proved the mother 
of invention—many inventions. A short 
time ago one heard on every side com¬ 
plaint about the scarcity of spring fabrics for 
hangings and upholstery. The prices of imported 
materials soared with a rapidity disheartening to 
even the most affluent home decorator. But mean¬ 
time this very restriction was working to the 
advantage of American-made textiles, and we 
have produced unusual quantities and qualities 
of fabrics that are the direct outcome of the 
shortage of foreign-made goods. Ingenuity 
stepped into the breach. The result?—New ideas 
in American fabrics, and such imported materials 
as we have made up in quality of design for 
meagerness of quantity. 
Virile Designs 
The general tendency in this spring’s fabrics 
seems to be toward conventional pictorial designs. 
The naturalistic flowering, indeterminate patterns 
will always have their place, especially for bed¬ 
room furnishings, where a restful general-toned 
effect is desired. But for living and dining-rooms 
and porch use, striking, daring pictorial designs 
have been introduced and accepted with much ap¬ 
preciation. The country house dweller wants to 
be amused, even as to window hangings. 
One unusual window hanging depicts in a virile 
direct manner the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh. 
There is an invigorating zipp and a swing to the 
fulled galleons. Therefore with his admiring fol¬ 
lowers—including a properly posed dog—Raleigh 
plays bowls. There are fish, gulls, lions and dra¬ 
gons, all of the heroics. The colors are a strong 
definite blue, green and orange. It is just the 
fabric for a library or living-room of a country 
house. 
Along the same decorative lines, suitable for a 
man’s bedroom comes a pictorially interesting 
design of the Canterbury Tales. The monk and 
knight, the friar and the bagpipe player, each is 
done in direct simple outline and flat color. The 
material as a whole is a well spaced and well- 
colored ensemble. It is only upon close examina¬ 
tion that we discover the house to be piebald, and 
that the bagpipe player is almost bursting with his 
efforts. 
Another strikingly decorative linen has two 
Linen again with crude bird 
and branch designs in vari- 
ous colors; 31" wide, $2.75 
idea of flat pure primitive color with convention¬ 
alized decoration is shown in a small bedroom 
cretonne where all the primary colors are com¬ 
bined in an all-over pattern, interesting points of 
accent being given by vari-colored jackdaws. 
Black for Accent 
Black still holds a high place in decorative 
schemes, perhaps not to quite the extreme extent 
of last year, but there is scarcely any porch fabric 
that does not have much black worked into the 
design. This is easily accounted for: black brings 
out any color combination to advantage and does 
not fade. For country and seashore houses this 
is a real asset. 
One of the most artistic fabrics of the season is 
a natural colored linen with orange flamingos. The 
foliage is of clear green and blue, a softening 
effect being given by a touch of grey, but the 
fabric is made really irresistible by well-placed 
touches of black that bring out the design. Used 
for hangings in a grey room with other spots of 
orange and a few pieces of black furniture, this 
drapery would find its precise metier. 
Designs for Wicker 
Wicker lends itself to every possible combina¬ 
tion of stain and coloring. A branched design of 
graceful wistaria and long-tailed birds forms an 
excellent chair covering. A delicate small-potted 
design gives to the weave of the wicker a full 
credit. Heavy covered designs, when used with 
wicker, take away from the light and airy feeling 
that wicker should have. Therefore, select some¬ 
thing graceful that has the same underlying feel¬ 
ing as the wicker itself. Stain the wicker grey, 
and use a covering of grey, blue and dull greens. 
There are several stunning and inexpensive 
cretonnes for porch use. One has a tan back¬ 
ground and a broken stripe of black against which 
are thrown large vivid bunches of flowers. These 
are so placed that the fabric will cut to advantage 
for furniture covering. Also, with the light com¬ 
ing through them the bouquets are effective when 
hung at the windows. A smaller design has a 
quasi-Poiret flower bunch in yellow, orange, blue 
and green, against a small broken black stripe. 
The design has a striking decorative effect. These 
(Continued on page 92) 
A formal patterned cretonne 
with black background and 
rich dull colors; 31", 45 cents 
Heavy linen, 36" wide, with 
hand-printed black conven¬ 
tional flowers. $2.25 a yard 
Another hand-printed linen, 
36" wide, with designs in 
green, yellow and blue. $3.60 
An excellent porch cretonne 
that comes in various color 
combinations; 31", 60 cents 
