Key Takeaways
Hula is Linwood’s geometric fabric collection, bringing archive-inspired patterns to life through hand-painted artwork, printed linens and hand embroidery. This article explores the stories behind its scallops, zigzags, stripes and rounded motifs, reveals how fabric grounds and traditional techniques shape each design, and offers advice on combining scale, colour and texture in curtains, blinds, cushions and upholstery.
After recent collections such as Titania, which celebrated florals, and Lola, with its playful stripes, Hula marks a bold turn towards geometrics. For Linwood’s design team, it began with an ambition: to create a more abstract collection and play with larger patterns. The team searched far and wide for unusual geometric references, exploring different scales and introducing a new, chunkier base cloth for selected designs. Hula also offered a chance to do something Linwood had never done before: bring hand block printing and hand embroidery together within the same cloth. This combination of print and stitch gave the collection its energy.
Created in our Hampshire studio, where archive references are repainted by hand, Hula encompasses printed linens, embroidered fabrics and textured blended grounds. Its references span the 19th century through to the 1930s, yet the collection feels assuredly contemporary. Scallops, zigzags, rounded squares and sweeping stripes are reimagined through expressive brushwork and considered colour.
For interior designers, its range gives plenty to play with: a generous motif to shape a room, a compact coordinate to connect its elements, or a quietly embroidered linen that introduces pattern through texture.
Where the Patterns Began
Look closely and these references have more in common than their dates suggest: the same rhythm in the patterns, the same balance between motifs, the same instinct for colour. That shared thread lets each design keep its own character while sitting happily together.
Archive pieces are starting points, never templates. The team pulls a design apart, tries the motifs in new layouts and plays with the spacing until it feels right. A detail that once played a supporting role can end up the star of its own design.
Colouration is just as important. Archive documents carry the colours of their age, so the team has to look past them and imagine each design afresh.
Repainting is central to that transformation. It gives the studio scope to establish its own handwriting while preserving the qualities that first caught the eye: an uneven edge, a fluid brushstroke or an unexpected relationship between shapes.
‘It is also important for us to bring these influences together and make them feel fresh and contemporary whilst retaining our own personal handwriting,’ says Ella Richards, Head of Design.
Ahoy There: A New Perspective on a 1920s Design
Ahoy There began with a rustic 1920s design whose main motif was a basket of flowers. Tucked in its background was a small-scale geometric, and it was this detail the team enlarged and repainted, keeping the original charm. Playful zigzags meet a crisp striped border and a subtle nautical note, with hand-drawn lines and unexpected colour combinations softening the geometry and lending the pattern an informal charm.
Printed on a heavier weight linen blend with real texture, this upholstery fabric has the presence to make a chair or sofa the star of the room.
Ahoy There Embroidery is where hand block printing and hand embroidery first met at Linwood. On a linen blend with a gentle sheen, a zigzag chain stitch echoes the pattern in the vertical bands, with complementary stitching adding texture and variety to the stripes. It is the most varied embroidery in the collection, and the block-printed elements keep the rustic individuality of the original artwork. ‘I loved the texture within it and the tonal movement you get. It feels very genuine,’ says Ella Richards.
The contrast between print and embroidery creates a spirited, artisanal fabric with a strong visual rhythm. Suitable for curtains, blinds, cushions and decorative upholstery, it gives designers another way into the pattern, with stitched details that invite a closer look.
Printed and Embroidered Fabrics, Developed Together
The team had long admired hand block printing and hand embroidery. Hula’s bold shapes and generous scale felt made for the pairing.
The choice of technique followed the motif. Ravioli’s small, rounded shapes lend themselves to the tonal variations and irregularities of hand block printing, while Nimbus’s graphic, linear motifs suit a cleaner, finer stitch. A decorative French knot gives a simple dot character and depth. Where the two techniques meet, the embroidery is worked first, with the stitching guiding the placement of the wooden blocks. Every impression is made by hand, bringing subtle variations that are part of the fabric’s appeal.
The studio developed the designs, while the Indian embroiderers brought decades of expertise in stitching and finishing. The magic lay in the exchange between them: ideas passed back and forth, different embroidery techniques were explored, heavier stitches introduced and designs trialled on different base cloths. Four or five versions might emerge, each refined time and again until design, stitch and cloth came together.
Embroidery also changes a fabric’s relationship with light. Raised threads cast small shadows, satin stitching catches a passing highlight, and decorative knots bring individual details into relief. Photographs can’t fully capture these qualities: the feel of the cloth and the subtle shifts as it moves are best appreciated with the fabric in hand or hanging at a window.
‘Embroidery can enhance a printed design by adding other dimensions such as texture and depth. I love the way it brings tactility to the fabric and makes you look more closely at the design,’ says Jill Duffy-Unwin, Senior Designer.
Ravioli: Colour, Rounded Squares and French Knots
Adapted from a 19th-century Japanese design, Ravioli arranges softly rounded squares and dots within an orderly repeat. The structure is clear, but the painted forms introduce a pleasing looseness.
In its multicoloured versions, layered washes create gentle tonal shifts. Sherbet is the team’s favourite. ‘I just love the way it conveys the playful nature of the design and adds a fresh, joyful, contemporary feel,’ says Ella Richards.
Quieter colourways are a subtler route into geometric pattern. Tonal motifs against neutral grounds bring the painted edges into focus, making Ravioli a useful companion to plain upholstery or a broader stripe. Its cotton, linen and viscose ground contributes a tactile, relaxed finish.
Ravioli Embroidery gives the same vocabulary a different expression. Hand block printing introduces variations within the rounded shapes, while French knots lift the dots. On a cushion you can study those details up close; curtains let the repeat unfold more fully.Nimbus: Embroidered Linen for a Softer Scheme
Inspired by a monochrome design from the 1930s, Nimbus traces rhythmic scallops across pure linen. White painted lines against a coloured ground preserve the slight variations of the original hand-worked artwork.
Its seemingly effortless flow required careful development. Nimbus proved the most challenging design to resolve: the team needed to maintain a balanced, continuous layout within the repeat dimensions required for both print and embroidery.
Nimbus Embroidery translates the scallop into satin stitch on a dyed linen blend. The embroiderers initially suggested a more open stitch, but the studio favoured a denser finish to give the line greater definition. An adjusted scale and tonal threads lend the embroidery a subtle richness, with shifts in shade emerging as light travels across the surface.
For clients who usually choose plains, this is the team’s suggested introduction to Hula. Its gentle, relaxed quality adds interest without demanding the room’s attention, and the satin stitching shows to best effect in drapes. Pairing it with plain upholstery lets the embroidered surface become a quiet focal point.
How the Fabric Ground Shapes the Pattern
Choosing the cloth is part of designing the fabric. A ground should enhance a design rather than overpower it, so across Hula the team considered how each fabric would carry the artwork and contribute to its finished appearance.
A chunky ground can enhance a simpler motif, allowing the texture of the cloth to participate in the composition. Finer painted lines call for a lighter surface, such as Linwood’s signature European linen, capable of retaining their detail. Finding the right balance gives both the drawing and the material room to express themselves.
Zippy demonstrates how one pattern can take on different qualities through its ground. Ella discovered its starting point within an early 1930s floral design. Experiments with scale, layout and spacing developed that small detail into bands framing a lively trail of diamonds and dots.
Printed on pure linen, Zippy introduces colour across curtains, blinds, cushions and upholstery. The heavier version uses a weighty linen-and-viscose ground, with classic colour combinations suited to chairs, footstools and other upholstered pieces. Both preserve the overlapping shapes and irregular edges of the original block-printed reference, which bring a sense of movement to the design.
Statement Fabrics: Twist, Kyoto and To The Point
Three further designs expand the collection’s range of scale and expression.
Twist takes its cue from a 1930s artwork, sending broad ribbons of colour across pure linen. Painting it required more relaxed strokes.
‘This was a challenge for me as my natural handwriting tends to lean more towards finer marks and intricate details,’ says Jill Duffy-Unwin. ‘I really enjoyed embracing the spontaneity of hand painting the artwork and retaining the soft flowing feel of the original 1930s artwork.’
That freedom remains visible in the finished fabric. Used as curtains or upholstery, the sweeping lines can introduce a fluid counterpoint to the more structured elements of a room.
Kyoto reimagines an Uzbek block-printed reference in watercolour. A flower-like central motif is encircled by dots and framed by striped corners. Its balanced geometry gives it presence, while softened edges and variations in colour keep the drawing expressive.
To The Point combines hand block printing and embroidery on a chunky linen blend A large circular medallion is framed by radiating stripes, dashes and painterly marks. Curtains and headboards give space to appreciate its expansive composition; on smaller pieces, the positioning of individual motifs becomes part of the design decision.
Designing with Hula: Scale, Texture and Balance
Start by deciding which fabric leads. A large design such as To The Point can set the decorative direction at a window, leaving upholstery and supporting textiles to provide quieter areas around it. Where the room already has strong architectural detail or patterned pieces, Nimbus Embroidery is a gentler choice.
Drawing colours from a patterned fabric can help connect upholstery, paint and accessories. The Zippy Blue-Green sofa sits against rich green walls, extending a colour from its lively stripes across a larger surface. With Twist in San Gimignano, soft blue walls and orange cushions pick up different shades within the fabric, bringing the scheme together while allowing its sweeping pattern to remain the focus.
Texture is another way to build interest. A printed linen beside an embroidered cushion creates a close relationship through material, while introducing a different surface. Requesting samples and viewing them together in the room’s light will reveal nuances of each design.
Hula comes down to small decisions: spotting a detail worth pursuing, choosing a cloth that flatters the drawing, finding the stitch that gives a motif a little more life. The result is a collection with a point of view of its own, and plenty of room for designers to make it theirs.
Explore the Hula collection and discover the prints, embroideries and colourways.