These designs are based on 13th and 15th-century Hispano Mauresque designs, which Alidad has long been fascinated by. What he particularly loves is the way they combine both floral and geometric motifs, which live happily together. Alidad's aim was to create a collection that would blend together all kinds of colours and patterns, and that would also look at home with antique and vintage textiles. He originally wanted to create something that was essentially elaborate multi-patterned stripes on a massive scale, but was restricted by the size of the loom. To get around this problem, these are woven with the stripe on the horizontal, a solution that allowed him to produce designs that could be used for upholstery as well as curtains or cushions.
Each design has a central panel, which is the master pattern. Most comprise about eight stripes in all. There are also one or two companion fabrics for each design that can be bought by the metre - these are lifted straight from one of the secondary patterns. Customers can either use these fabrics exactly as they are or cut them up into stripes of varying widths and mix them with their own choice of fabrics. They look fantastic, for example, as borders on seat cushions, braiding for cushions or edging for table cloths.
