Textile Styles From Around the World

Though they've been around for centuries, these beautifully bold and intricate fabric styles are having a resurgence in modern interiors

Jess McBride 9 February 2016

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home design industry with a lifelong passion for color, pattern, and texture of every "stripe"

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home... More

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Long a staple of bohemian-style decorating, traditional global prints have surged in popularity among those looking to breathe a fresh perspective into their rooms. Whether you want earthy African Kuba cloth to texturise a neutral scheme, a bold suzani print to add levity to a formal bedroom or a trendy ikat pattern for your bathroom tiles, there is a worldly textile for every project.

Anthropologie

Batik
You’ve seen this tie-dyed favourite layered tapestry-like on artsy teenagers’ walls and bed canopies. But have you seen it upholstered onto an antique wing chair?

Originally hand-dyed with the inky blue of the indigo plant, batik came into prominence in Indonesia. Like many heritage motifs, it has been made more widely available (and affordable) through screen printing.

Studio Marcelo Brito

These blue fabrics work especially well in the coastal style, whose signature palette of crisp white and navy can easily become tired and repetitive without the addition of an unexpected element like batik.

Contemporary Bedroom Architectural and Interior Photography

Kuba cloth
Kuba is an African textile woven from raffia leaves and dyed naturally. Between 1600 and 1800, the men of central Africa’s Kuba clan harvested and wove the raffia base onto which women would then stitch elaborate geometric designs for ceremonial garb, baskets and headdresses.

Charmean Neithart Interiors

While typically neutral and black in colour, kuba cloth occasionally has a dash of red. The presence of red hints at the cloth’s pedigree: the Kuba people believed that the red dye extracted from the Baphia pubescens plant held magical, protective powers. Cloths that feature this colour were surely ceremonial in nature.

If you browse around Houzz, you’ll see a lot of these handmade cloths framed on walls instead of in active use around the home. While a seamstress could sew one onto a pillow face, those that are woven the traditional way with grasses and raffia leaves are understandably delicate, and many proud owners find that they deserve to be treated like special museum pieces more than everyday functional textiles.

rice paddies interiors

Suzani
Suzani fabric developed along the Silk Road in Central Asia for use in a bride’s dowry. When a baby girl was born, an elder of the village drew a stylised botanical motif on cotton or silk panels. The panels were stitched by female members of the newborn’s family using silk thread, then joined together as a quilt that stayed with the girl as part of her dowry.

Today, suzani designs are more commonly screen-printed on cotton, and the intricate stitched varieties command hundreds of dollars per metre where available. In modern homes, suzani prints can make a formal space more casual, and they pair well with intricately carved antiques like the bed pictured here.

Eclectic Living Room Eclectic Living Room

Commonly, though, you’ll see them as part of a spirited mix of patterns in a colourful family space. The scale of most suzanis makes them an eclectic complement to smaller-scale prints and florals.

Ikat
Several years into its reign as a major design trend, ikat is a word we associate more with its signature feathery pattern than any specific fibre content. Historically, ikats have been cotton-based fabrics woven with tie-dyed yarns to create this instantly recognisable motif.

Atmosphere Interior Design Inc.

Flame stitch
Flame stitch (and its relation, bargello) describes the zigzagged needlepoint stitches shown on these chairs. Although flame stitch is thought to have originated centuries ago as a Hungarian needlepoint design, anyone around during the 1970s and ’80s knows this hypnotic pattern, which was all the rage during that era too.

Axis Mundi

Bargello
Today, the more pointed motifs are often referred to as flame stitch, while the more curved ones are considered bargello. These are named for a museum in Florence, Italy, that houses chairs done in this pattern.

Beckwith Interiors

Dare I suggest that flame stitch may be making a comeback? It has even inspired non-textile materials like these popular Loom mosaic tiles from New Ravenna.

Anne Michaelsen Design

Crewel
Crewel is a hand-embroidery technique associated with the Kashmir region of India. It’s used to this day in drapery, pillow and bedding fabrics. Generally speaking, fine, loosely twisted double-ply wool yarns are chain-stitched onto cotton. No culture has a monopoly on embroidery, though, and each seems to have its own style. Indeed, there exists a 17th-century English version, which features wool yarns on unbleached linen.

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Have you used textiles from around the world in your home? Tell us your favourite styles, or upload photos in the Comments.
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