Featured What would you do with a vintage wallpaper scrapbook?

Indeed!

As a textile designer, my mother was always looking at patterns, especially florals since they were her specialty. She also did lovely paisley's and similar designs. I remember as a teenager shopping with her for clothes in Manhattan department stores and she'd stop to look at a dress or blouse to study the pattern. Occasionally she'd point out one that she knew was done by another artist in the textile design studio where she worked.

A few times, she found blouses that were her own pattern... which she bought for me and were always my favorites to wear. That's a really fond memory for me.

 

Me, too... I still have wallpaper in my living room, kitchen, dining room and upstairs bathroom, plus borders in my family room. Most of it is chintz style... as my mother's daughter, I love anyting floral!

 

When we moved into our country house, the kitchen had been papered very recently. There was nothing at all wrong with it. EXcept, it was a gazillion prints of every kind of berry known to man and beast. Blueberry, raspberry, ligonberry...

Every day, three times a day, (or more) I would stir my coffee, mix a cake, all the while muttering: loganberry, cherry, blackberry... Then one day, I burst into tears and sobbed that I just couldn't DO IT ANYMORE!!! My husband, who had thought God knows what was going on, finally realized that it was just the wallpaper, but that that paper had to GO. I will read (MUST read) anything that's put in front of me: aspirin bottles, instructions for electric fans, notice number 4million623 from Capitol card co., the weekly bargains from every grocery store in the county, any book at all, or magazine, even Popular Mechanics. (They don't keep "People" where I get the car fixed.)

That way doth madness lie!

 

When I was still in elementary school, my mother had my bedroom papered with a nondescript paper on three walls and a "Sweet Sixteen" paper on the fourth. I guess she thought I'd feel grown up having it... but I still had it as a teenager and it felt kind of silly then!

 

LOL!

 

Hey, Pat! Did you shop at Best's? And was your mother a devotee of Sister Parish?

 

Gee, I'm not sure. Mostly I remember Macy's, Lord & Taylor, and Bloomingdales in the City, and Abraham & Strauss in Brooklyn (where we lived).