One of the easiest ways to add personality to a project is to use fabric selvages. They are ready-made coordinating trims or edge finishes just waiting to be used.

The selvage denim craze

If you happen to know a millennial, someone born in the 1980s or 1990s (I have two sons who fit the bill), you have probably become familiar or reacquainted with selvage denim. It has become popular again in the millennial quest for authenticity.

Once upon a time, all denim was the 32-inch-wide, heavy-duty stuff known as selvage or “self-edge” denim. When jeans became high fashion, and not just for work clothes, the more labor-intensive method of making selvage denim was abandoned for the quick-to-make, wider version that we are more familiar with these days. As with most fashions, selvage denim is having a resurgence. You can see it on cuffed jeans everywhere, for example.