by Becky Shelly
Faux Matelassé is meant to mimic the style of hand-stitched Marseilles type quilts made in Provence, France. Matelassé is the French word meaning quilted or cushioned and having a surface with a raised design looking like it is embossed.
Sophisticated and timeless, perfect words to describe the stunning Matelassé design. If you have ever seen this fabric and would love to have it repeated on your walls, you don't' need to be a faux artist or interior designer. You can have this beautiful faux Matelassé fabric finish on your walls using today's stencils. The wide range of stencils today gives you the opportunity to create this finish on your walls. And, your walls will look like the came right out of a French manor home.
A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example. A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend, and may leave behind him an exhausted industry and a legacy of industrial hatred. A tough manager may never look outside his own factory walls or be conscious of his partnership in a wider world. I often wonder what strange cud such men sit chewing when their working days are over, and the accumulating riches of the mind have eluded them.
—Robert Menzies (1894–1978)
When first beginning to design your faux Matelassé, the color of your wall does not matter, but you need to start with a smooth wall surface for your backdrop. The entire wall will get painted when the embossed stenciling has dried on the wall. So, the first step is to decide which design or pattern you would like.
The faux Matelassé fabric finish for your walls is as easy as filling in the cut stencil opening area by using a trowel, letting it dry, sanding lighting to get any ridges down so a smooth flat raised design (faux embossing) is left. You then apply two coats of flat or eggshell paint in whichever color you choose and apply with a ½" nap roller. Light shades such as off white or soft muted pastel shades work great.
This embossing technique is possible for the faux Matelassé on walls or for other effects such as damask, floral, vines, basket weave, lace, brocade, trellis, frieze, fleur de lis, ferns, chinois, fruits and more.
True, the walls fell,
we had neither much beauty nor fame,
so when the hosts came,
we withstood them,
no more.
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
And, this isn't the only technique. Today there are so many possibilities from metallic finishes, decorative ideas for floors, ceiling, furniture, cabinets and etching glass. Faux painting started in Europe many hundreds of years ago and is used in the most discriminating homes in the present day.
Believe me, once you start to apply these techniques it won't be long before you can consider yourself an artist with unlimited possibilities. Becky Shelly has been a decorative painter for many years. Visit her blog for fool the eye stencils with sources on art instruction, superior faux and stencil products available on the market today.