Footstool finished from previous blog entry

I finally got around to finishing the stool. I just couldn't find the right fabric,and there I found it in a corner,a roll of toile. I used antique gimp that I bought in Rome to finish. Toile is tricky,it is a little off kilter in one spot. Rats. What do you think? The flash changes the colour,second picture is correct.

That's it,I am now adding the finishing gimp to a chair I did in silk and haven't put it on yet. That is my least favourite part about upholstering.

The merits of working at home.

Gorgeous sunny day today,and after my walk with my neighbour,I came home to make some bread. When you work at home,one of the bonuses is the extra jobs you can do. 3 years ago,I bought a bread machine from friends of Hilary at a garage sale. They had used it once. Well,I love it,and have made many loaves. Today I am making French bread,hoping to take half a loaf to Barb on Wed. Once I got that going,I started reading more cookbooks,looking for a sour dough starter. I wanted to make more artisanal type bread. I even checked out my collection of vintage cookbooks. I love them,the recipes speak of another time,that is for sure, One called for milk that was "yet warm from the cow." I have a picture of my little collection,my favourite has a handmade embroidered,cloth cover,dating 1900.

Anyways after looking,I chose a recipe and I now have my starter percolating on the counter for 5-10 days.
Striper was helping by keeping me company,but he isn't sure of the bread machine noise when it kneads the loaf.

So while all this is working away,I am working on a wonderful old stool with chippy gray paint and Victorian lines,that is padded with straw and horsehair. The girl I bought it from,loved it the way it was,her style is very ecclectic,but I need it clean inside, with new vintage fabric. I only have a picture of it being stripped down. Which by the way, is one of the reasons upholstery is expensive at a shop. The taking off part takes longer than putting new innards in. Especially one like this with old rusted nails. So if I get off this computer,it will be done by the end of the day,and I will add a picture. That is if I am not too busy eating warm bread with butter!

"The Big Tidy Up" in my booth at Southworks Antiques

Tuesday I went to clean up my booth at Southworks Antiques in Cambridge. I hadn't been for a bit,so it was a mess! Quilts and linens everywhere. I took lots of new items but I always start by tidying the existing stock. A nice red toile footstool had just been sold,so I had room to move things around.
I used my new iphone to take pictures,so I haven't got it all figured out yet. I tried to turn one picture clockwise and it became a video file that can't be deleted!! That will bother me forever.

So that was the booth all tidy and restocked.
Last picture is a wonderful little footstool I got last summer.It is chippy,shabby  cast iron and an unusual shape. I did it with a lovely silk, maybe I should have used ticking but the silk appealed to me.
 My booth is 059 at Southworks. They are open 7 days a week,just Goggle Southworks Antiques for their hours. I love going there,I clean up my booth then go for a spin around the store. There are 120 dealers,so I usually find something. Next time I will remember my camera,the pictures are better and they don't turn into a video file!!

Another Collector's Estate Sale!!

Who would have thought that only a couple of weeks after that last estate sale that I called the "once in a lifetime sale", that we would get to go to another one. This was the estate of a lifelong collecting couple,who had planned on opening an antique store, but never did.

There was a line up with a list,so you had to wait until your name was called. It took awhile,and we kept wondering why nobody was leaving. Well...once inside you could see why. The house was full to the brim with wonderful items. They had very good books,lots pertaining to  local Buffalo history. But I headed to my favourite spot,the bedrooms where all the linens,buttons and lace were out. This sale was a bit more expensive than the last, so I had to look carefully through everything, me and the other hundred or so people in the house! My 2 friends ,Hilary and Ellen,were there as well. We all had our own ideas of what we wanted.

I also got 4 lovely sets of pillowcases,but they are in the wash after being boiled.The cat towels are the complete 7 days of the week.A bonus to get all seven.

The silk pillow sham was maybe a souvenir brought home after the war.All silk embroidery, fabulous condition. Very pretty.
The box is full of matchboxes,full of beads to make Indian necklaces from the instruction brochure. Totally useless,but charming.

All in all,it was great fun,we all got good stuff and
we went for chicken wings after.

The moral of this story is..don't wait for everything to be perfect..open your antique store...wear perfume every day...use the good china. If you keep waiting,it may never happen, like it didn't for these people.

Hello again, Haven't been doing any exciting things lately.Plumbers,new tires,new brakes etc. So I thought I would tell you how to get linens clean. I have a number of ways to clean linens, it all depends on the item,which way I choose. First let me say there are some failures, but I say it is "Do or Die" as I can't sell dirty or stained stuff.
The most frequent item I deal with is the 1940's cotton,printed tablecloths. I love them but often they are stained. There are 2 methods for these...the first is to boil them. In the 40's-50's when they were sold,lots of items were boiled on the stove. If you look at a label on old embroidery floss,it usually says "boilfast." This was the way before all the products we have now.

Here is my disclaimer..be careful,it is hard on your hands,and if it boils over,it can mark your stove. Clean it up immediately or don't let it happen.

Anyways ,use an old canning pot, fill with hot water 3/4 way up and add 1/4 cup of dishwashing granules,for the dishwasher,like Cascade .I use whatever is cheapest. Put on stove,add linens but always keep it so that it is close to 3/4 of the way up. You don't want a boil over. Use a wooden spoon to shove down and stir. Put on Medium heat and simmer for about half an hour. Try to put similar colours together. This also works well with damask napkins and tablecloths.   I also put the fan above the stove on.

This is very hard on hands,so I pour it off into the sink wearing oven mitts, through a large plastic strainer. Let it drain and I sit the strainer in the top of pot and carry to washing machine.I put a  towel in front of the entrance to my front loader so I don't ruin it with drips,(I think it is very strong that powder) and load it in by tipping the strainer. Don't handle it with bare hands,it dries them out. Wash as you normally would. Never let the hot linens sit for long after the boiling,as the dye can transfer to a neighbouring piece.That is called "fugitive dye".
Every once in a while,this may happen with a piece,especially red dye,so do them alone.
I only use this pot for boiling,not for canning anymore.

My friend doesn't like this method,too caustic for her,so she puts hot water and Oxi-Clean powder,in the laundry tub,adds the linens and soaks for awhile stirring a few times. Drain and wash. Also very hard on hands so wear gloves.

Exciting photos!!  Be careful,but it does work well. This method is not great for precious items. That's for another blog entry.

I did get a chance to do another little footstool. I used vintage fabric and it looks very sweet.

Well I have linens to deal with, I could boil for days and never catch up!!   I love doing them.

How to waste a morning

Remember the little ladies with baskets I got at the estate sale? Well I wanted to make them into pincushions. Simply gluing a velvet ball filled with fiberfill seemed like cheating. I set out to make little strawberries to put into the baskets. Well you can see I started and sewed 6 but in the end I have only done one. I don't have felt so I made the leaves out of a wool blanket. Had to sew it down and then I made the little white seeds with embroidery floss. Here I am making minus 5 cents an hour !! It is cute but was too big for the baskets. I am going to felt the blanket and leave the others until I get the emery sand I ordered. Then they will be needle keeps,that sharpen when the needle is stuck in. As for the ladies,they will have to wait.

That's all the sewing for today,I need to start ironing some stock for Southworks. Maybe I should tea stain it to make it look old...  :)

Friday..Hilary learning upholstery.

Okay, it's winter,so my friend Hilary and I try to do projects we don't have time for in the warmer months.She is a floral designer but also has a booth in a wonderful antique store in NOTL,called " Queen's Antiques."
I promised to teach her how to upholster a footstool,but she had to strip it down herself. That is one of the most time consuming parts about upholstery! We set a date for Friday,so she came here as I have all the tools and supplies. It turns out that it was not an easy first projects,the legs were fixed and it made it harder. She is talented in many things,so as I showed her what to do,she took to it quickly. She was nervous of my pneumatic staple gun until she tried it! She loved the ease of it and the smoothness of its function..no kickback.Loud though!
The footstool looked amazing in the end,and the pictures show it in the final stages and then completed.She asked me not to put her in the blog because she was in her work clothes. I never do what I am told,so here she is.
Striper was resting in the other part of the basement as we ousted him from the upholstery room,which has been a new nap place. Now I must get some jobs done. Hilary made dinner as my reward, a wonderful lasagna with eggplant and tons of cheese. What will we do next?
I am off Sunday to pick up a great enamel top table I bought. Will take my camera!

The most beautiful boy in the world!