A surprise Wilendur find

Those of you who follow me on my blog or on Facebook know I'm a Wilendur fanatic! I've been collecting vintage tablecloths for years and never really expect to find one I haven't seen before.

I picked up this pretty and just LOVED it. Held it up to check for damage and when I didn't see any, I quickly folded it and continued shopping.

Got it home and ask my husband to hold it open so I could admire it fully. He is the one that found the "Wilendure" tag.  What a bonus to a tablecloth I already loved!

This one will be staying in my personal collection, but if you're looking for some terrific vintage tablecloths, be sure to visit The Pink Rose Cottage!

Do you croft?

Crofting is one of the easiest and best ways to get your beloved vintage linens clean! 

 

The quickest thing to do, is a soak in a little Palmolive dish soap, just a drop, and a small amount of OxyClean. Dissolve in hot water and then add cold to make a lukewarm soak. 

Soak for a few hours checking for colorfastness of your items.

Rinse and then lay face down or pattern down on the grass in the sun. Keep it wet! Use your sprinkler or bring a bucket and dunk the linens to re-wet them. 

By afternoon all those pesky yellow spots and age yellowing should be gone. Sometimes it takes two days of crofting, but more often then not just a day will do. 

A quick hand wash and on the clothes line they go! 

I do have other tricks of the trade I'll share at another time, but that's the quickest, safest, and most mild approach to cleaning vintage linens. 

Love vintage tablecloths? Visit The Pink Rose Cottage for gorgeous, lovingly cared for vintage linens. I never  prepare my linens with bleach or starch so you have many years of loving your linens! 

Kicking off Summer with a HUGE CLEARANCE SALE

New items have been added to the Clearance category of The Pink Rose Cottage. Also, deeper price cuts on previously reduced stock! Some items are last call and will be going soon. So shop early for the best selection.

Antique Purple Amethyst Bottles Make Sweet Vases

I've always loved groupings of flowers in old bottles. What fun it was to find these beautiful purple amethyst bottles! And lucky I just have a lot of purple flowers blooming in the garden right now. But really any color flower would look wonderfully cottage chic in these bottles!

Ever wonder how these old antique bottles got their striking color? 

Many glassmakers though the centuries have attempted to produce clear, colorless glass. Impurities, especially iron oxide, often resulted in glass that had a hint of green, bluish green, or light aqua color.

It was in the mid 19^th century that manganese dioxide, popularly called “glassmaker’s soap” began to be used by American glass manufacturers as a decolorizer. By including a small amount of manganese in the melt, they could produce glass that appeared virtually colorless.

An interesting characteristic of colorless glass which contains manganese dioxide is the tendency to turn shades of purple when exposed to the rays of the sun or to other ultra-violet sources.

To achieve this beautiful deep purple color, these bottles have been artificially exposed to very high levels of ultra-violet light. The same light that is used in the food industry for food safety.  Natural sunlight would probably never achieve these amazing shade of amethyst and purple. If it could, it would take decades of continuous sunlight exposure.

 I put together some wonderful groupings of these amethyst bottles for sale at The Pink Rose Cottage. Stop by while your garden is blooming! I'm sure you'll enjoy these as much as I do!