Kelly Swallow
Super gorgeous and quirky chairs, taking bespoke to a whole new level!
Kelly Swallow’s chairs are individually sourced vintage pieces, each with its own unique charm. The personality of every piece is rediscovered by painstakingly and lovingly choosing an exciting collection of fabrics to create unique pieces with newfound splendour. The fabrics range from vintage to designer including Kenzo, Zoffany, Liberty, Andrew Martin, Designers Guild, Osborne & Little, Lorca, Mulberry – an eclectic mix with exciting and surprising contrasts.
Kelly Swallow Wingback chair
BE INSPIRED BY KELLY SWALLOW A PATCH ABOVE THE REST!
Kelly is originally from Ireland but now lives just outside London. Kelly has always made things, she started sewing as a child a very distant memory of Kelly’s is seeing a patchwork quilt made by her grandmother, so I guess that’s where her love of patchwork comes from!
Kelly swallow patch work chair
Kelly adores fabrics and get ridiculously excited when sourcing new fabrics for her collections. She loves to mix new and vintage, Kelly loves finding a piece of furniture which is the perfect match for a fabric theme she finds this very satisfying!
Kelly Swallow Patch work design
Kelly can’t bear to be away from here fabrics and sewing machine for very long, and has been known to take one on holiday! Her obsession was fashion design through the 80′s and 90′s, while also dabbling in upholstery. Kelly always liked to use ‘unexpected’ fabrics- she remembers crazy coats made from recycled vintage curtains!
Kelly swallow
Kelly worked for Greenpeace for all of the ’90′s so craft continued mainly as a hobby. When her son was born she left Greenpeace, and turned to recycle, reuse ethos to furniture. Her passion for fabrics and her huge collection is now used to reninvent beautiful old pieces of furniture, creating a thing of beauty from something that has been passed over and discarded is enormously exciting. Kelly knows it’s now fashionably known as upcycling but it’s just what shes always done!
Kelly Swallow chair
Kelly Swallow
Kelly Swallow has also just launched some new ranges using stunning, unusual fabrics. From the fabulous button backs telling the story of Art Deco, Hungarian, mangle cloths to chairs and footstools covered in a patchwork of rugby shirts undoubtedly tracing the history of a sports career! Very different sources and types of materials but the results are always exciting, colourful with a story to tell.
Kelly Swallow
Kelly Swallow sells ‘ready to go’ pieces and also takes commissions, allowing customers to be completely involved in creating their own bespoke piece.
Kelly Swallow
Kelly swallow
Kelly has recently just finished a vintage linen chair. This is a bit different from her vibrant patchwork chairs which you have seen in the above pictures – it’s part of her vintage linen and grain sack ranges which have been very popular. This particular linen is from 1930′s German flour sacks with quite ornate print – this is the first of this style of chair that she has done.
Kelly Swallow Vintage Linen chair
Kelly Swallow
Follow Kelly Swallow on Twitter click here http://twitter.com/patchworkchairs
Kelly Swallow
I love your work and one of the chairs is very similar to a patch work blanket that I got in Oxfam in Dundalk in ’94. A couple of years ago a couple’s car broke down near my parents house in SW London and we invited them in for a cuppa. Well the chap knew the blanket and it was made by someone in his family over on the West Coast of Ireland. So the moral is these patchworks are lucky lucky luck from Sinead
Thank you Sinead for such a lovely comment, Kellys work is impressive, what a lovely story re the patchwork blanket
pleased it made you smile
These chairs are really wonderful, well done, not always easy with multi patterns and quilts. magical.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing.
Reblogged this on KOTHEA: The Fabric Blog and commented:
Different!