Toile de jouy

I’d been looking for some fabric to make a curtain for the shower room door in the Jeraboam and had decided I wanted to get some ‘toile de jouy’. Toile de Jouy is a fabric that originated in France in the late 18th century and originally comes from the town  Jouy-en-Josas in a south-west suburb of Paris. You would probably recognise it as it has quite a distinctive look. It tends to have a white or cream background with a repeated pattern printed on it. The patterns will often tell a story, normally involving a french country scene, but some included more industrial stories or detailed fables. The fabric used is normally linen or a light canvas, but now often cotton. Toile made a bit of a comeback in the 70’s when designers started using the patterns for shirts, and then again in 2000 when the patterns started to appear on teapots and other homeware. But toile has also appeared in other countries, it was popular in the US in the 1930s, particularly in the historical areas such as Williamsburg, all having their own stories to tell. Modern fabric designers today, such as Timorous Beasties, are still producing it.

Troyes has a strong history in textiles, and has an amazing collection of fabric outlets in the old warehouse area under the Ellen brand. The ladies in the upholstery and curtain outlet that we went into were super helpful, They had a good selection of toile for me to chose from. And I will definitely be going back for some upholstery fabric too.

It was great having my sewing machine all set up in the atelier ready to cut out and sew up my curtain.