Old 03-22-2019, 07:31 PM
  #18  
Rose_P
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Dallas area, Texas, USA
Posts: 3,056
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The more I try to learn about fabric periods the foggier I seem to get on the subject. Keep in mind that many prints have been popular for decades and many have been reproduced. I was startled a few years ago to see a fabric in a store that was the exact same print that I had in a dress when I was a child in the 1950's. I still had a little doll shirt my mother made from a scrap of that dress and could verify - it's exact. I can't guess what you have there, but it's most likely 20th Century. I don't believe any of them would be impossible from the 1930's or even earlier, but check against a good reference. Barbara Brackman has a several books on fabric. There is also a useful color reference from AQS by Eileen Jahnke Trestain Dating Fabrics A Color Guide 1800 - 1960. You might be safest to state that you acquired the fabric at a certain time, so it can't be newer than that. There are some dyes and techniques that would not have been available before a certain period, and that would narrow it down, but not very precisely. There were thousands upon thousands of fabrics made from the time that factory dying techniques were developed. So the possibility of finding the exact thing isn't great. Reference books reveal trends from different periods. Plaids, for example, were made early on, but at first they were woven rather than printed. Today you can buy both. I think you can see the difficulty in dating them, just from that example. By the way, I would love to see your artwork.
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