Vintage Thingie Thursday: Vintage Pot Holders - A Shopping Frenzie!!

Welcome everyone to Vintage Thingies Thursday

If you have a love for vintage things, well....you have come to the right place. We have a really good time each and every week!!!
If you are new to this party, please take the time to read and follow the instructions for participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday, click HERE. I try and keep things fairly simple, so please make sure you follow the instructions. Please only ONE link per week. Lastly, if you link in, LINK back to my blog, so everyone can see all of the vintage goodies on display that day. If you don't link back here, they won't know who to visit......thanks so much. Lastly, try to make an effort to visit the other participants. I know myself, I get so behind and busy, but this year, I am going to do my best to visit each week. 

I'm LATE.....I know.....please forgive me!! I have a very good reason for being late however! One of my friends called last night and asked if I wanted to go to an estate sale BEFORE the estate sale. SQUEEE.......are you kidding!! So....I am late getting home this evening. The sale is not until Friday, and I seriously think I may have to run back over there tomorrow evening. 

Have you seen the after Christmas commercials for the after Christmas sales?......the frantic ladies.....running from one direction to another.....brain on overload at all the great stuff......piles in your hands and arms, then those turn into piles on the floor.......trying not to miss a thing......well, that was me!! I had a car load when I left....and the worst part of this story was my husband was home when I pulled up. ahem.......well.....we will just stop that fun story right there and not talk about when I got home!

I took a quick snap of these cute vintage pot holders, they have not been soaked or cleaned up, but they will be good as new when I am done with them. The lady was a quilter, embroiderer, and her house was full...WAS is the key word here, I brought much of what they had home with me. I left the quilts, but I don't think I can get one of them out of my mind. ALL HAND DONE...and NEVER used....and only $60.00. A Steal....I think I am going back for one of them tomorrow.

Don't you think these are the cutest things? Can't wait to go through all my boxes, some of it will be listed in my etsy shop, but lots of it will be for me. Oh...and did I mention I bought a sewing machine??? Yea....that one was a little hard to explain....poor Steve just went to bed.......I'm not so sure he was happy.

I have always wondered why when I stand in line for over an hour to be the first inside an estate sale, I never find the things I found tonight....I think I have my answer. Friends of friends get to have first shopping rights and get all the good stuff. I hate to think what was already sold today before I got there as I heard the guy talking about a truck load that left early afternoon. Nonetheless, I can not be too greedy.....I hit the mother load and I am super happy about that!! The lady had two sons, and the daughter in laws did not want a thing. I'd love to send them a thank you card! 

Special thanks to my friend Joy, for calling me....it was the most fun in a short hour I have had in weeks!

 Have a great Vintage Thingie Thursday.

Vintage Thingie Thursday: Vintage Market Kitchen Towel

Welcome everyone to Vintage Thingies Thursday

If you have a love for vintage things, well....you have come to the right place. We have a really good time each and every week!!!
If you are new to this party, please take the time to read and follow the instructions for participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday, click HERE. I try and keep things fairly simple, so please make sure you follow the instructions. Please only ONE link per week. Lastly, if you link in, LINK back to my blog, so everyone can see all of the vintage goodies on display that day. If you don't link back here, they won't know who to visit......thanks so much.

I have several kitchen towels that I don't use. In fact, they are safely tucked away for someday...for what? I am not sure about the what part of that, but saved for someday none the less!

I found this one at an estate sale. I loved the market scene on the towel, it reminds me of a scene that you might find from Paris.


 

It was a great buy and I purchased it and brought it home. I liked that the signed name was the same first name as my own. I guess you can see why I brought it home!

Have a great Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Vintage Thingie Thursday : Vintage Souvenir Spoon Rack - With Updated Look!

Welcome everyone to Vintage Thingies Thursday. If you have a love for vintage things, well....you have come to the right place. We have a "dog-gone" good time each and every week!!!
If you are new to this party, please take the time to read and follow the instructions for participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday, click HERE. I try and keep things fairly simple, so please make sure you follow the instructions. Please only ONE link per week. Lastly, if you link in, LINK back to my blog, so everyone can see all of the vintage goodies being showed that day. If you don't link back here, they won't know who to visit......thanks so much.

It is no secret that I have a passion for vintage linens and have stacks of them stored in containers away from view. A long time ago, and I can not remember where, I saw a display with vintage handkerchiefs and decided to try and duplicate that for myself.

Some of these are proudly displayed in my sewing room so I can enjoy looking at all their vintage beauty. This is the simplest of projects. Do you recognize what this display holder is? That is right.....a souvenir spoon rack from the 60's or 70's. All I did was spray this with some spray paint and it was ready to hang on the wall.

I did add a vintage button or two to where the hole was (that is where it hangs from the wall) and I rather like how this turned out.

Best part of it is, it is a easy way to get those vintage hankies and linens out of storage and start enjoying them on a day to day basis.

So next time you see one of these sitting on the shelves at Goodwill or a thrift store, think of the possibility and take it home with you, a little paint sure makes a difference.

GIVEAWAY WINNER!!!

I'd like to thank everyone who entered the quilt giveaway. Random Number Generator must have had a connection to a higher power to be, because I was sorta shocked when I counted the comments and realized who won this quilt.

Congratulations LaVoice from Thoughts From Meme's Corner.....Like I said, I was shocked and would like to think maybe CC would be pleased that you won ......I think you might want to go buy a lotto ticket today!

Happy Vintage Thingie Thursday everyone....hope you have a great week.

Vintage Thingie Thursday : Vintage Quilt and A Sunbonnet Sue Giveaway in Honor of Our Dear Friend CC

Welcome everyone to Vintage Thingies Thursday. If you have a love for vintage things, well....you have come to the right place. We have a "dog-gone" good time each and every week!!!
If you are new to this party, please take the time to read and follow the instructions for participating in Vintage Thingies Thursday, click HERE. I try and keep things fairly simple, so please make sure you follow the instructions. Please only ONE link per week. Lastly, if you link in, LINK back to my blog, so everyone can see all of the vintage goodies being showed that day. If you don't link back here, they won't know who to visit......thanks so much.

By now I am sure you are aware of the loss of our dear blogging friend CC last week. It has been a very sad shock to all who loved this sweet lady. We will surely miss her here on Vintage Thingie Thursday. CC always had a kind word and encouragement for everyone she visited and her post were always so fun and interesting.

It was no secret CC loved Sunbonnet Sue and she shared her patterns with so many across the globe. It was always a real treat to anticipate her post and see what sweet Sue's were going to be on display that week. CC had been participating in Vintage Thingie Thursday for over a year and a half. She was ever faithful to have a delightful post and something to share each week. CC my Sunbonnet Sue friend, you will be so very missed.


So in honor of CC....this post is about some Sunbonnet Sue things, I had been saving for her return......I will never see anything that has Sunbonnet Sue on it that I will not think of our sweet friend. Always.

 This is a very old quilt. The quilt top was made by my grandmother's mother. My Great-grandmother, whom I never knew.  My memaw had this quilt top for years along with a couple of others. She gave them to my mother who had her step mom quilt them. I have always loved this quilt and it has always been one of my favorites.

 I actually had this stored, and had forgotten where it was. It was in a cedar chest full of a couple of other quilts along with a lifetime of treasures.

 This dress was always my favorite as a child. I love all the fabrics in this quilt, but for some reason, this one always held a real interest for me.

 One block at the top of the quilt does have some damage. I hope to get this repaired. I am not sure I could do it myself so I may have to find someone who specializes in repairing antique quilts. I have to say this is so ultra soft, all the fabrics are as soft as butter and I worry a repair will not blend in with the feel of the quilt. Any suggestions from an authority out there would be helpful and appreciated.

 I also have these two quilt swatches in a Sunbonnet Sue pattern. I plan to turn these into pillows at some point, I think they are super cute. I think I picked these up at Canton Trade Days a few years ago....and yes, they are still waiting to be turned into something useful.....ahem.

Now, I hope you remember the post about this quilt. Click here to refresh your memory. I had spent a lot of time thinking about this quilt and decided I needed to pass it on to CC. I had this packaged, boxed and ready to go when the news came of her passing. I felt so bad that I had not gotten this in the mail weeks before hand. I just knew in my heart that CC would have loved and treasured this quilt.

So, in honor of our sweet friend, I am going to host a giveaway for this quilt.

CC loved giveaways and she held them quiet frequently on her blog. In fact, I was the lucky winner of one of her aprons. I just feel in my heart that this would make our sweet friend happy, and in passing on this Sunbonnet Sue quilt to a blogging friend, the love of Sunbonnet Sue will keep on going. 

Just leave a comment to this post and I will announce the winner next week on Vintage Thingie Thursday. There are no restrictions on mailing, anyone worldwide is eligible. You don't have to have a blog to enter...just leave a comment to this post or to the facebook post.  If you feel like passing on the information about this giveaway on your blog and or facebook, leave me a separate comment for each that you have done that and I it will get you an extra entry for each one.

I hope to have lots of support for this giveaway in honor of our sweet friend. I will let Random Generator choose the winner....and hope the powers to be have a hand in choosing  the lucky winner.

Have a great weekend everyone....I have missed you guys....thanks for being patient and faithful in keeping VTT going in my absence. It was hard not to be here during my break.....I missed you and your treasures. It is good to be back in the swing of things.

Cleaning Vintage Linens and Quilts Tutorial

I have had several emails and comments wanting instructions on cleaning vintage linens and quilts. Because if that, I am going to repost and update my original post on cleaning vintage linens here today.

I have cleaned hundreds of linens using this method and I'd say 90% of the time, they turn out good as new. There have unfortunately been a few times when I have damaged some of the original cloth in old dresser scarves due to the fact that the piece had been folded for so many years that the fabrics were just too fragile at the fold lines and I did not realize that in time.

I did not trash these, as the work is still wonderful, I use these "accidental" pieces to maybe re-purpose them in the future. I'd say that this type of thing has happened maybe less than 5% of the time. So please, take what I have to share with you here and just be aware nothing is ever 100%.....but this is darn near!

 You will need: White Vinegar, Biz and Oxi-clean. (sometimes, I have a hard time finding the Biz, and have to check several stores to find it. My local grocer will order this if I ask, so keep that in mind if you have a hard time finding it near you.)

You will use:
Per gallon of water
1 scoop of Oxi-clean
1 scoop of Biz (Use the Oxi-clean scoop, not the scoop in the Biz) If you are mixing up 4 gallons of water, like I did here, you will need to use this recipe times 4 for it to be the correct mixture:

For example:
4 gallons of water
4 scoops of Oxi-Clean
4 scoops of Biz - using the Oxi-Clean scoop


In my original post, I was heating the water on the stove so it was very warm. I still do that if I am cleaning mostly WHITE linens.  I do not boil the water, I just heat it till it is hotter than from the tap. If I have several colored pieces, I just use the hot tap water. You can do this in the sink as well. Here I have them in a bucket.

My original post stated I usually soaked these for 24-48 hours. I have since stopped doing that. If the whites are really soiled and dirty, then yes, I do soak them up to 24 hours. But, I check on them and make sure they are not already clean and just sitting in the solution. I have found you really only need to soak these until they are clean.

For quilts......I run almost luke warm...NOT HOT water in the bathtub. Due to the colors in the quilts, I never use hot water. I add the soaps and usually mix it up times 5  for a half tub of water. (Pay no attention to the dirty tub....it was going to be cleaned, but decided to soak this quilt first...then clean) Yes, I sometimes have a dirty tub, with a son who works in a messy job some weeks, I don't get to it too quick.....just keepin it truthful! 

The colored water is the gunk being pulled from the fabrics. All that yellow discoloration you find in vintage linens...this is what is in the water. I usually let these quilts soak for maybe an hour or so. I check on it and if the water is REALLY dirty, I drain and repeat for about another half hour. Handle the quilt very gently.

This is a vintage apron I soaked in the sink. It washed up really well, with just a few spots that would not come out.

Once the quilt has soaked well, I rinse gently in the tub and hand wring. Then I wash it in the washer on gentle cycle with a very mild detergent. I add about a cup of vinegar to the rinse water and run it through the rinse cycle twice. The key is to get ALL the soaps out of the quilt and any vintage linens.

This is a picture of linens I had rinsed ( I thought well) before I added the vinegar, and once I added that,  you can see there was still soap in the fabrics.

And as always, I love to hang all my vintage quilts and linens out in the sun to dry. HERE is another quilt once it was cleaned. See the pretty white blocks? They were as yellow as yellow could be, it looked like the blocks were a sand color. Now, back to the original bright colors. This particular quilt once it was washed pulled a bit where the binding was sewn onto the quilt. I just restitched it by hand and it was as good as new. I have never had that happen with any other quilt, just this one and it was easily repaired. Once your quilt is dry, you can toss it in the dryer for a quick fluffing.

I hope that answers any questions you may have. If a piece has rust spots, this solution does not take the rust spots out...only the discolored yellow and most stains other than rust. There are rust removers you can purchase and I have been told that works well, but I have not tried it. For me, if I can get the piece back to the original white and bright colors, that is enough for me.

Good luck with this, and if you are as nervous and I was when I started using this solution, just start out with a small piece and work your way up to something larger, that is what I did. After I discovered I was not going to ruin my treasures, I tackled a quilt and it worked wonderfully.

I always use this same solution to soak and clean vintage sheets. I have a stack of vintage sheets waiting to be transformed into a quilt. The first thing I do when I bring them home is fill the tub and soak them before I wash them in the washer. Then line dry. They clean up so pretty I think and really makes them look fresh as new.

I guess you could say, I have a great love for vintage linens, but have a hard time bringing them home without cleaning them up right away. And when the process is as easy as this one....that makes it all the better!

I am linking in today with Smiling Sally, for Blue Monday...as I think it qualifies...lots of BLUE in this post!