We are Minouc and Nienke from Amsterdam, Holland. We are a daughter and mother team. France is where we fell in love with antique markets, in beautiful old villages. That's where we initially found our most wonderful treasures, from earthenware to brass, from postcards to fabrics.
What we love so much about all those vintage objects, is that they are so beautifully made. Usually they are unique or hard to find. We love giving these items a second life, passing them through and making other people happy with them!
Our fabrics are mostly in very good condition, we think it’s very important our fabrics are clean and spotless, unless it’s mentioned in the description!
We have been working as a team for years now: we started with our first Etsy-shop, where we sell handmade jewelry in victorian, bohemian and delft blue style: http://minouc.etsy.com.
Soon we also started 'Minouc Brocante', selling vintage and antique fabrics, soon to be followed by many other treasures...
What we know about the history of all those beautiful fabrics is that they were made in France and Germany for duvet covers, from 1850 to 1950. They are known as 'farmer style fabrics'. A farmer's girl would have the duvet covers in her 'trousseau' when she got married. They were made in many different and beautiful floral patterns until in the fifties they became out of fashion. They were printed with the so called 'needle-point'-technique.
An interesting detail about these duvet covers is that they are a lot shorter than the ones we buy nowadays. This is because farmer's families slept in a so called box-bed ('bedstee' in Dutch), where they used to lie down half-seated..! These duvet covers and these wonderful fabrics are not made this day and age. Most fabrics we sell are probably older than we mention in the listing, often probably even antique, but as we can never guarantee their age, it will always be an estimation...
It may be clear that we just LOVE those fabrics! Our own mothers had pillow shams and bedding in these lovely fabrics, we both grew up with them! Now we sell them to all of you out there to use them in any beautiful sewing project..! The fabrics are increasingly hard to find, but we'll keep on trying to find them for you..!
To complete our collection of fabrics we sometimes add new traditional Dutch fabrics to our fabric bundles, these fabrics are still used for bedding and traditional clothing, but they've also become very popular for quilting. They match very well with the antique and vintage fabrics we sell. We think these fabrics are also very beautiful and we just love the history behind them! We love to see how tradition is kept alive...
Our search for beautiful finds and materials will never end. You will find the results of our searching and collaboration in this shop. We hope you will enjoy exploring our shop, just as much as we enjoy searching for these vintage beauties! (If you're searching for a particular colour in fabrics, just type the colour in the 'search items'-bar!)
Minouc and Nienke