If you’ve ever taken a closer look at a framed painting, you have probably noticed a sort of frame of fabric around it inside the frame. This is a fabric liner, basically a frame covered in fabric. It’s a traditional look, and fabric liners act sort of like mats for paintings. They can help introduce color and they provide some visual breathing room between the painting and its frame, and the painting and the room it is in.

For a long time, liners were only available in a few colors, usually natural linen, white or black, and only a few different profiles, which is to say shapes and sizes. Today things are different. Fabric liners are now available in over five hundred different fabrics available in any one of twenty-five or so profiles. That’s over 12,000 different combinations available!

And while those five hundred colors include traditional linens and other neutrals, they also include a huge variety colors from subdued to almost shocking and dozens of different textures and sheens. The profiles run from tiny and flat to wide and scooping, so we’ll be able to find the right combination of fabric and shape for anything you bring to us.

For this landscape, we chose a soft blue with a touch of grey similar to the colors in the sky and water to allow the bright sunny areas and the trees to take prominence through contrast. You’ll also notice that we added a fillet inside the liner to coordinate with the frame and draw the eye inward.

The landscape has a traditional feel and called for traditional framing, but we can also get a little wild. This bright and fun fish called for a fun frame. We used a wide, bright green liner to coordinate with the background and make the colors of the fish really pop. We didn’t stop there though. We also added a narrow liner in red to add an accent for a spot of color. Like the landscape, the liner repeats the frame and pulls the eye in. This isn’t your grandmother’s traditional frame!

This is just scratching the surface of what fabric liners can do. They also look fantastic on needlework of all kinds and are an elegant and creative choice for shadowboxes too. Come by and we’d be happy to show you how fabric liners can make your art look special!