old fabric swatches

There are free samples or swatches of fabric from as far back as the 1800s
in the Powerhouse museum in Sydney.
The swatches or small samples of fabric have been collected and compiled in the form of swatchbooks for at least 300 years. The Powerhouse Museum has several volumes containing thousands of bright, unfaded samples of fashionable fabric designs, braids and laces ranging from the 1830s to the 1920s.
The patterns here are in the public domain in Australia.