For the past 20 years,
Rabbit Goody, owner of Thistle Hill, has developed historic textile
fabrics for interior furnishings and historic clothing. In the last four
years, the mill has added historic trims including tassels,
tie-backs, cording, tapes, fancy gimps, and fringes, and coach lace
(upholstery trims used for carriages and livery clothing).
Some of the signature interior furnishings produced by Thistle Hill
Weavers are Venetian carpet
(warp faced striped carpet) popular from the 18th through 19th
centuries; bed-hangings,
and window drapery.
Thistle Hill produces the fabric, the trims, and completes projects ready
for installation.
Thistle Hill also provides custom fabric to the film industry. Our fabrics
have appeared in Amistad,
The Scarlet Letter, Life, Brother Where Art
Thou, The Titanic, The Crossing, and Tom Hanks’ soon to be released
movie, Road to Perdition.
Thistle Hill has provided bedding textiles, carpeting, and custom designed
clothing fabrics working with set designers and costume designers to
create fabrics which truly represent the appropriate period.
“Custom weaving is very much like being a gourmet short-order-cook” says Goody. She and her staff have developed the ability to change over looms for very short runs of high quality and unusual cloth. Thistle Hill will run as few as 24 yards of a custom fabric and as many a 2000 yards.
Some of our favorite projects have included George Washington’s sleeping tent, Martin Van Buren’s bedhangings, Thomas Jefferson’s drapery trim, James Monroe’s carpet and coverlet, Mt Vernon’s small dinning room drapery and drugget. Woodrow Wilson’s boyhood home stair carpet, tie back and tape for Mt Vernon’s Venetian blinds, and tassels for Mt Vernon.
The making of trims, called passementerie,
is a branch of weaving with its own tools and equipment. Jenny Stewart and
Rabbit Goody have redeveloped equipment pictured in Diederiot’s
Encyclopedia and Falcon’s Compendium. Working from 18th
century pictures, they have been able to bring trim making and coach lace
back to a modern hand craft. In this way, trims can match drapery fabric
and fit period shapes and forms.
Thistle Hill Weavers can also reproduce an existing specialty fabric. For example, historic car interiors, upholstery fabric, or a favorite fabric that has gone out of production from a larger mill. We also help our clients produce first runs of their own designs. This allows new artistic designers an opportunity to test their fabrics on the market in short runs before committing to commercial production.
An example of our Venetian carpet.
Worsted Parlor Fringe with Tassels
Venetian carpet on loom
Herringbone even striped dimity