COLOURED LINEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 877, 22 January 1930, Page 7

COLOURED LINEN

New Vogue Exhibited In London BEDROOMS TRANSFORMED The snow-white linen beloved of our grandmothers has a serious rival today. Delicately-tinted sheets and pillow-cases have lured many a woman to depart from old-time tradition and introduce a note of colour into bedrooms, where white once held undisputed sway. But the possibilities of coloured linen are by no means exhausted by the purchase of coloured sheets, as an exhibition demonstrating “Colour in the Bedroom,’’ opened in a fashionable London store recently testifies. The display took the form of nine varying rooms, in which old bleached linen was set out in an alluring array. Delphinium, periwinkle, daffodil, coral, apple-green, jade, biscuit, flame —these were but. a few of the stimulating shades incorporated in the colour schemes of the several rooms. The great advantage of them was that the colours were guaranteed both fast and fadeless, so that exposure to sunlight or the vagaries of the washerwoman were alike powerless to dim their hues. This exhibition served to prove the charm of the correct blending of colour in a room, but was not quite the first, introduction of coloured linen, for housewives have been steadily accumulating soft 'shaded napery and bed linen, which they find harmonises with many colour schemes better than white. PRINCESS MARY’S CHOICE Princess Mary chose for her home recently a tablecloth of antique ivory shade, hand-painted with vivid red poppies—an extremely effective design. Ordinary damask table cloths are also transformed by hand-painted floral borders. For instance, a plain cloth will be bordered with pale pink and blue anemones, with table napkins to match. Pale cafe-au-lait is the colour of the season for table linen. The very newest afternoon ones have the centre of the plain filet matting, left just as it originally was before the border of filet matting was formed into a lace pattern. One of the quaintest ideas is the new pillow-slip with tiny pocket to hold one's handkerchief during the night. Very new, too, is the use of applique flowers on coloured linen shee-ts. Cool apple green linen with cottage flower applique form a delightful pair of sheets complete with applique pillow and bolster cases Rose pink, egg-shell blue and sweetpea mauve crepe de chine sheets with pillows to match are a luxury fashion to be envied but not followed by most of us. An enterprising woman can achieve the same effect by making “sheet flaines” from remnants of crepe de chine left over from frocks. The upper and visible half of the pillow-slips can also be made from crepe de chine to match. While on the subject of linen it would be interesting to know why so much linen is still marked in such a slovenly manner. Sometimes sheets of the most exquisite quality bear the owner’s name scrawled in ink on one side with perhaps a blot of ink on the other. The way to mark linen, ol’ course, is either by linen tabs, with the name printed or worked, or else by means of a stencil, which costs very little to have cut.