Discounted textiles allow savvy home decorators more choices

Gini Lawson is budget-conscious. Her husband, Richard Mockler, has expensive taste. Together, the Beacon Hill couple worked with a friend in the interior-design business to select fabrics for new draperies and upholstery. They initially chose swatches available "to the trade," a term that typically means customers can purchase the goods only at a fabric showroom, and only through an interior designer.

Like many homeowners, Lawson and Mockler yearn for luxurious surroundings but don't want to spend a fortune to obtain them.

"When she sent me the prices, it was going to cost $6,000," Lawson said of her designer's recommendations. "I'm a bargain shopper from way back, so that's when I started looking for a less-expensive option."

Their search led them to Designer Fabric Liquidations, a Seattle outlet for high-end home textiles that have been discontinued or overstocked. While Lawson wasn't able to find exact matches for the expensive fabrics she originally had selected, she found something pretty close — at a significant discount.

"I had swatches from my 'wish list,' and I tried to emulate color, texture and interest," she said. "There was one particular fabric — a beautiful chocolate-brown drapery silk with crinkles — that would have cost me $185 per yard. One of the pieces at Designer Fabric Liquidations was almost the same color, woven into a nubby, chenille-style diamond pattern." Lawson paid $16 per yard for the 10 yards she needed for draperies. Savings: $1,690.

Lawson figures she's saved thousand of dollars — not only on her chocolate-brown draperies, but also on sheer linen fabric shot with a thread of silver, which she stitched into seven Roman blinds for her dining room.

"I love fabrics, having sewn all my life," she said. "I made all the draperies myself, because I'm a good seamstress."

Clients are fabric collectors

The home-textile craze lures do-it-yourselfers and interior-design professionals alike to outlets like Designer Fabric Liquidations, said owner Rick Baye, whose shop is located on Rainier Avenue South. About one-quarter of his clients are designers; the rest are often fabric collectors. "They just buy beautiful material and decide what to do with it later," he said.

Baye admits to surprise at the enthusiastic response after he liquidated inventory from a former textile business. "I had my own line of high-end fabrics that were distributed to the trade for most of the 1990s. I discontinued the line a year ago, and in doing so, I found that there was a tremendous market for very expensive fabrics at inexpensive prices."

The idea of opening a permanent outlet for designer fabrics occurred to him "after about the 50th person said to me, 'We can't buy fabrics at these prices anywhere,' and it struck a chord."

Baye used his relationships within the textile industry, mills and manufacturers that previously produced his designs to track down overstocked or discontinued fabrics. He works with 35 to 40 mills in the U.S., France, England, Italy, Switzerland and Peru.

"Sometimes I can bring in one yard; other times, I'll have 300 yards of one design," Baye said.

Most decorator fabric measures 54 inches in width. Baye prices most of the pieces at $30 per yard and under, unless it's really unusual, like the $140-per-yard mohair fabric that he sold for $89 per yard.

More fabric sources

A pair of textile enthusiasts in Poulsbo also has tapped into the demand for designer-quality home-furnishing fabrics.

Carol Roach and Carrie Snyder started Fabric Boutique in early 2002, filling a second-story outlet just off Front Street in downtown Poulsbo with bolts and rolls of decorator fabric.

"Carrie is a designer, and she used to buy fabrics in the Washington, D.C., area," said Roach. "She bought a container of 500 yards, sight-unseen, and asked me if I wanted to buy some of it, too. We decided to sell what we didn't use in a garage sale."

Luckily, the container was filled with quality fabric. "We had wine and cheese and invited our friends, and we basically gave away a phenomenal batch of fabric at low prices," Roach said. "By the end of the night, they were asking, 'When are you going to be open again?' "

Fabric Boutique has expanded its selection to include silks from a source in India. None of the fabrics are considered "irregular" or "seconds," Roach said. "We're selling end pieces of designer goods — sometimes only five yards."

While she declined to "name names," Roach hinted that the designer fabrics are those you'd see in full-page advertisements in slick home-furnishings magazines. The fabric, which typically measures 54 inches in width, sells for $5 to $25 per yard, with the average price at $15 per yard. The India silk pieces are 44 inches in width and $12-$18 per yard.

Fabric Boutique's customer list has grown to 800, about 15 percent interior designers, Roach said. While the store doesn't employ an interior designer, she often advises customers who bring in photographs and samples of paint or carpet in search of coordinating fabric. "We'll help work with customers on ideas in the store."

Inspiration from TV

Why this upsurge of interest in elegant fabrics for furniture, window coverings and bedding?

"I came out of the menswear business — that was my background," Baye said. "What's happened with clothing is that styles don't change any longer. You can wear anything. There's no singular look. So home décor and home furnishings give people another way to express themselves."

And then there's the influence of television. "If you turn on the TV these days, with the average person getting 60 channels, 10 percent of those channels have to do with home decorating," says fabric-seller Terry Sawyer. "There's 'Trading Spaces,' 'Christopher Lowell' and HGTV — and lots of my customers are addicted to those channels. People are staying home more than they used to, and I think they're decorating the nest a little more, too."

Like Baye, Sawyer has developed relationships in the high-end home-textile industry that allow her to sell luxury goods at discounted prices. Through Serendipity Home Décor, her Web site and Marysville-based store, Sawyer features home textiles and trims, as well as designer samples or discontinued bedding sets. She landed on the idea after years working as a fabric researcher and buyer for a major yacht manufacturer.

If you love the European look of lavishly trimmed pillows piled atop a luxurious comforter, Sawyer has all the fabrics, tassels and trims you'll need to create your own bedding ensemble.

She typically sells 54-inch-wide goods that retail for $25 to $120 per yard at prices ranging from $12.50 to $18.50 per yard. The fabric selection includes prints, jacquards, silks and cut velvets.

Sawyer stocks discontinued decorator trims, often the priciest part of a decorator pillow or drapery panel, for $6.50 per yard to $10.50 per yard. With styles including brush, loop, tassel, bouillon fringe, spaghetti fringe and cording, the trims typically retail for $10 to $30 per yard.

"There's a lot more that you can do with trims than trim a pillow," she said. "People are using six-inch bullion fringe across the bottom of a sofa or around a table-topper."

Designer Fabric Liquidations and Fabric Boutique don't offer sewing services, but each outlet provides a list of recommended sewing workshops and upholsterers. At Serendipity Home Décor, Sawyer offers custom design and sewing services.

"Custom design has become a huge part of this business," Sawyer said. "People who ask for decorative pillows will sit here with me, and we'll design it together." The custom business allows clients to replicate ideas from the pages of home-decorating magazines at considerable savings. If you've paged through a high-end catalog and seen a 20-inch trimmed pillow priced at $200, the idea of spending $25 to $40 is appealing, Sawyer said.

A seven-piece designer bedding ensemble, which includes duvet cover, shams and decorative pillows, could retail for $4,000, she said. "But if my customer's budget is $2,000, I will try and re-create it for half the price."

Debra Prinzing is a Seattle-based design writer.