In the wake of my epic office craft room remodel — with its 277 square patchwork quilt of vintage wallpaper hand cut by moi — Hannah turned me on to Flair Squares. Looks like Flair Squares were precut, prepasted 12″ wallpaper squares made and sold by Dupont, sold in packs of 15 squares. I found an ad for Flair Squares for 1980. So let’s guess: 1970s into the 1980s. You know I love these to heck. How can I not love designs called Mums Galore, in fab 1970s colors. Above: Mums Galore from vakvar on etsy.com. (now sold).
Above (as if there were any doubt): Strawberry Patch Flair Squares — Four packages of 15 squares, $10 per package — also from vakvar, also now sold.
Above: Two packs of Wildflowers from Daisy’s Attic on etsy for $12. (now sold)
Above: Old Country Flair Squares, two packages for $10, (now sold) from Repurposed Vintage on etsy.
Above: A yellow bamboo pattern, two packages available, $9.35 each (now sold), from PorkyPieDesigns on etsy.
Four packages of Easy Plaid, $25 take all four (now sold), from iprefervintage on etsy. Well, we do, too! 😉
And: There is another one (???) package of this pattern — Daisy Daisy — $5 per square (???) — from AuntBonniesCloset. Daisy Daisy! You know I love my flower power!
Okay. So the way I count it, there are about 16 packages available in just these (easily found) listings. That would be about what it took me for my whole room, although I did use an even greater variety of designs. I basically kept adding designs until I felt I had “the mix right.” A good thing about these Flair Squares: I think all these colors would actually harmonize well together — in a crazy 1970s patchwork quilt way, of course..!
More photos from vakvar’s listing provide more information and inspiration:
Above: I would not trust that the “pre-paste” would still work. I believe that some of the vintage wallpaper I used was pre-pasted. We didn’t even try that route. We used our own wallpaper paste — see my detailed instructions, how we hung the vintage wallpaper. So far so good, the stuff’s not peeling off. Yet. Argh.
hehehehehehehehe
If — unlike me — you do not have some 300 rolls of vintage wallpaper hoarded in your basement waiting to be cut into squares or otherwise used for undetermined future projects — or, if you don’t want to start hunting down wallpaper — or, if you don’t want to spend hours cutting squares — BUT, you want to make a patchwork quilt accent wall or backsplash or entire room like I did, now you know about Flair Squares.
Many thanks to all these etsy sellers for giving me permission to feature their photos, and to Hannah, who discovered these. Note, I did find Flair Squares on ebay, too, but at this moment, etsy is the better source.
More flair square finds
Vintage Dupont Flair Squares from Ebay seller crazy4rock. (now sold)
Jeanne L Clark says
I’m an old lady, LOL. 1980 I was a poor young newlywed artist. I went nuts for Flair Squares!! I used them in my rental homes (they were supposed to be easily removable). I did a bathroom wall with the seagulls, had the blue “quilt block” ones for a bedroom wall and *sigh* my favorite, the strawberry ones up there for my kitchen!! Thank you for bringing back memories!!
pam kueber says
Awwww, so nice to hear from you. I am an old lady, too! 🙂 I love Flair Squares! I still have an ebay Saved Search for them — so seem them and all their glorious patterns daily!
Gina Decker says
I did my bathroom with flair squares decades ago and they still look great. They are amazing.
I would like to change the pattern. How do I remove the old ones?
Pam Kueber says
Hi Gina, I don’t know the answer to this question…
Pam says
Back in 1978 when I first got married, we moved into a single wide trailer from 1964. It had a kitchen with a turquoise refrigerator, stove and sink. The curtains were avocado with a border of turquoise so I did the backsplash in the Daisy Daisy Flair Squares. We sold it in 1980 but I think I still have a few squares in my basement. Darn – now I’m going to have to search for them through my many, many boxes just to see if they are still there.
Charlotte says
I did a whole bathroom in the green ivy Flair Squares back in 1982-3. It went up easy, and stayed up nicely.
Jan says
I just scored a package of the Wildflower Flair Squares in blue and green (I usually see them in yellow and brown) for $1.00! There’s a picture here: http://www.thehistorykeeper.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-most-recent-finds.html