I went shopping for furniture and tablecloths happened instead.
Posted: October 16, 2014 Filed under: Flea market, Vintage tablecloths | Tags: embroidery, Flea market, vintage tablecloth, Wilendur 6 CommentsI wasn’t looking for tablecloths, honest!
Janeray and I sold so much furniture at September’s Vintage Bazaar that I went to the flea market at a bracing 6 a.m. to see what I could scare up to replenish our meager remaining stock.
You gotta go early to get the good stuff. I’ve seen customers there before daylight, shining their flashlights into dealers’ vans as the poor guys are trying to unload in the darkness!
Alas, I wasn’t quite early enough for a piece I would have snapped up in heartbeat—a vintage wood desk with a single drawer, a big old glass knob, and a black painted finish that just needed a little polishing. The lady standing right in front of me snagged it for under ten bucks. Darn!
You win some, you lose some.
So I lost on furniture this time, but boy did I ever win it big on tablecloths!
A whole bunch of dealers had piles of vintage linens that they seemed willing to practically give away. The reason probably is that almost all of them have stains small or large. If a dealer doesn’t specialize in linens, she usually doesn’t want to be bothered trying to get stained ones back to pristine shape.
I don’t exactly specialize in linens, but I do love them, and I consider stains a professional laundry challenge, so . . . .
Here’s what I came home with!
A card-table size Florida souvenir cloth. I love those blue . . . coconuts? giant dates? in the trees.
Whoop! It’s our (belated) blog birthday!
Posted: September 26, 2014 Filed under: Placesettings, Recipe, Vintage tablecloths, What we collect | Tags: Banana Pecan cake, birthday, birthday cake, Fire King jadeite, jadeite cake stand, Mosser Glass, vinatge tablecloth, Wilendur tablecloth 10 CommentsOur one year blog birthday just sort of sneaked by us last week while we were at The Vintage Bazaar. Late or not, we must have a cake! And a candle! And jadeite! And a “new” tablecloth!

It’s a tiny birthday, so we’ve got a tiny cake with one bitty candle. And yes, that IS a drip of jadeite paint on my kitchen wall. You would never have seen it if I hadn’t pointed it out. Darn!
We’re not getting fancy. This cake is posing on my kitchen table. I bought the tablecloth at The Vintage Bazaar from Nancy The Linens Lady. (Basically, I want to buy her entire booth.)
Yep, there’s more! Click here!
Tiny vintage table toppers, part 3
Posted: September 8, 2014 Filed under: Fun Finds, Vintage tablecloths | Tags: Antiques and Collectibles, Hull Pottery apple jar, tablecloths, Textile, vintage tablecloth 5 CommentsJaneray’s already done a couple of posts on the ultra small-sized tablecloths she’s found. They’re so small that, unless you’ve got a doll-sized table, they’re more like table toppers.
Not that we’re complaining!
Here’s one I just dug out of a thrift-shop pile of otherwise boring linens. Measuring a tidy little 43″ by 45″, it’s made of a tightly woven cotton percale with a wonderful all-over plaid & fruity pattern.
There’s more plaid and fruity when you click here!
Why don’t they make these any more?
Posted: August 29, 2014 Filed under: Home and Garden, Sewing Project, Vintage tablecloths | Tags: Textile, vintage tablecloth, Wilendur Comments Off on Why don’t they make these any more?
The same towel in three colorways: dark red, bright green, and bright red. On top of my favorite turquoise Wilendur dogwood-blossom tablecloth!
Last weekend I picked up four vintage printed kitchen towels at a great antique shop in Ilion, New York.
It’s the colors that got me, of course!
The floral print is pretty.
Though the long edges were raveled a bit, the towels didn’t show any wear or stains. They looked new, actually.
Then I looked closer at the raveled edges.
Yep, there’s more! Click here!
Back from a vacation shopping spree!
Posted: August 25, 2014 Filed under: Favorite shops, Fun Finds, Vintage tablecloths, What we collect | Tags: chalkware, vintage apron, vintage tablecloth, vintage thermos Comments Off on Back from a vacation shopping spree!Tablecloths! Aprons! Vintage fabric! Thermoses! (Or is that thermi?)
This is what happens when two vintage-crazy sisters go on a nine-day vacation with the ulterior motive of hitting as many antique shops as possible between the Finger Lakes in upper New York and Niagara Falls, ON.
Sadly, I don’t have time this morning to show the rest of my loot. In the week to come I’ll have better photos and mini reviews of the great shops we visited in Canadaigua, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Corning.
So stay tuned for more vintage goodness! We left lots of great stuff behind for you!