Paisley in Civil War Jubilee

Here's the paisley in my latest reproduction collection

This pack of Layer Cake precuts 10" square gives you an idea of the scale.

You can fussy cut borders and blocks

Here's the original document print, a cotton stripe...

We made it a little more red, a little less orange.

It also comes in browns

And blues

And here's our nod to today's bedrooms---grays.

NOT an authentic Civil War color, but a lovely shade of gray.

Paisleys with their cone-shaped figures have been quite popular since the early 19th-century when the west began importing cashmere or Kasimir shawls from India, and then knocking them off in Paisley, Scotland.

There were many variations on the design.

The 1840s and '50s were a bad hair era, but a great dress era.

This dress drapes like a wool or wool combination fabric.

The dress may be a cotton paisley print; the larger sunshade a fussy-cut wool.

Shawls remained quite popular throughout the century.

I asked my sister Dr. Barkman to identify the dog and she says---more bad hair---hard to say.

Aside from shawls, paisleys by the 1860s were considered most appropriate for at-home wear in intimate settings rather than as prints for street wear.

Two wrappers (dressing gowns)---

woman's on the left, man's on the right.

Men's dressing gowns were called banyans.

Posing in one indicated a kind of casualness.

And here a silliness that is quite contemporary.