Novelty Acts : Fun fabrics with whimsical prints take center stage. They’re no longer being relegated to mere slipcovers or accents. In fact, they’re climbing the walls.

As soon as Rene Mendoza saw it, he knew the novelty print fabric was just right for the vacation condo he’s decorating in Rancho Mirage. But the Orange-based designer isn’t using the whimsical print for a tablecloth or sofa pillows--the usual fate of novelty fabrics.

Instead, the lively combination of tea cups, cafe art, fruit and pitchers is going up on a wall. Mendoza is upholstering a breakfast nook wall with “Cafe,” an S. Harris fabric in yellow, moss green, blue and terra cota. He also plans to use it for place mats, bench cushions and a valance over the kitchen window.

Novelty prints are big this year. Once relegated to children’s rooms or used solely as accents on side chair seats and pillows, they are showing up on a larger scale today.

F. Schumacher & Company’s spring line boasts four instead of the usual one or two, said spokeswoman Marjorie McNaughton. A wall in the firm’s San Francisco showroom is upholstered in “Les Ouefs,” ($52 a yard, 53 inches wide) featuring a variety of speckled eggs.

New novelty patterns also depict bright seed packets, statue-like African animals framed in medallions of ivy vines, Medieval trees on worn parchment pages, tropical fish, stars and moons, giant buttons in vivid colors, a jumble of leather-bound books, even a Victorian baseball game.

Most are in 100% cotton and can be vinyl coated to withstand more wear and tear. Some are in upholstery-weight fabric.

Fabric weight and the intensity of the design determine how a print can be used, said Mendoza, who is a partner with interior designer Lois Harding.

To demonstrate, he unfurled a sample of “Cockatiel” ($52 per yard, 54 inches wide) a jewel-toned S. Harris print of birds against a background of palm fronds. When the fabric is gathered for draperies, the bird disappears, blending into the allover pattern. So Mendoza is using the fabric only on his client’s dining room chairs. He’s centering the birds on the chair backs. Because they are slightly curved, the birds will have a dimensional look, he said.

A print of urns detailed with Griffins and fruit, named “Classic Urns” ($100 per yard, 54 inches wide), could be used as drapes because the bold gray and black design by Decorator’s Walk stands out so well on the cream background, he said. Mendoza plans to use the fabric in a 100-year-old adobe house in Mexico. As for “Cafe” ($50 per yard, 54 inches wide) on the wall, Mendoza smiles and shrugs, “It was just more creative that way,” he said.

The cost of covering a wall with fabric? More than wallpaper, but not that much more, Mendoza said.

He gave as an example a wall that he covered in fabric for $300 that would have cost $200 to cover with quality wallpaper. “A designer look for an extra $100? The customer is going to go for it,” he said.

There’s more than one way to put fabric on a wall, but usually the walls are padded or lined with a plain fabric first.

The print fabric panels then can be sewn together, attached at the ceiling and baseboards and stretched. Fabrics can be attached directly to drywall, but a wooden frame has to be fastened first to plaster and masonry walls. In either case, staples or nails have to be covered with welting or trim unless blind tacking--a system for heavy fabrics in which the fasteners all hidden behind a fold of fabric--is used.

Upholstering gives walls what designers call a “crown.” In other words, the walls bulge in the middle, sort of like a pillow.

It is a design technique generally seen in more urban areas, such as New York and San Francisco, said Jason Titus, an Irvine-based designer who has upholstered several rooms in Orange County. One of his projects was a commercial office where a tapestry fabric created an Old World look while it helped cut down on modern freeway noise.

In residences, he’s used upholstered walls to achieve a more elegant look with a damask that had a slight sheen. He’s also upholstered walls with a contemporary stripe for a masculine, sporty look and with wool flannel for a home where the design theme was modeled after a man’s suit.

Titus thinks of upholstered walls as a good traditional look for a large room with hardwood floors.

“The result is marvelous. The sound quality becomes slightly hushed, and it looks very expensive, which sometimes you want,” he said.

Because upholstering walls is more expensive, Titus said he tends to use a basic fabric that the room can be built on. When he does use novelty prints on the walls, he said, he often has them paper-backed and hung like wallpaper because there’s so much intricate design it’s hard to tell if the room is upholstered or not.

Why use novelty prints? They are great conversation starters, for one, Mendoza said. And sometimes they inject personality into a design scheme.

For an avid hunter, Mendoza designed a room using a Schumacher print of wild animals. For a sewing room that had antiques in it, he did drapes and a settee in a novelty pattern that featured different kinds of chairs--Victorian rockers, overstuffed armchairs and stately Queen Ann chairs. Cost-wise, novelty prints are generally mid-range, designers say. “Cafe” retails for about $50 a yard (54 inches wide). Schumacher’s new novelty prints range from $42 per yard retail for “Garden Variety” (54 inches wide) to $106 for “Medieval Trees” (55 inches wide).

Because the fabric is so wide, it doesn’t take much yardage to do most walls, Mendoza said.

Novelty prints can be had for less at stores such as Calico Corners, a nationwide chain that sells home fabrics. At the Orange store, novelty prints in 54-inch widths ranged from $8.99 per yard for a collage of old-fashioned postcards in yellow with pastel blue, green, pink and lavender to $25 per yard for “Literary Guild,” an upholstery-weight tapestry with a book theme. The store’s best-selling novelty print has been “Ride ‘Em Cowboy,” a Western print of a cowboy breaking a bronc on a navy denim background ($14.99 per yard, 54 inches wide).

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The drawback to novelty prints?

“Depending on how novel it is, you will grow tired of it quicker than anything else,” Titus warns.

“If they are real current, they tend to get uncurrent real fast,” he said. If you love a print that might fall in this category, Titus recommends using it for sofa pillows rather than sofa covering: It’s easier to change pillow covers every four or five years.

Titus said his favorite is a novelty print that came out a year ago. It’s part of a series printed on linen, which gives it an Old World look. Sheets of music, tassels, urns and garlands are thrown together in the pattern. Titus used it for draperies in a den and pool room.

He said it falls into another category of novelty prints: the kind that are “so wonderful you love them forever.”

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Some fabric lines mentioned are available through designer showrooms, others through traditional fabric stores.