In the Oct/Nov issue of MaryJanesFarm, “Hanky Panky” (on newsstands Sept. 15), I led you here to my daily journal for a chance to win a beautiful, vintage, coffee-stained tablecloth, made with my coffee staining instructions on p. 74.
The tablecloth is vintage cotton, 36″ square, with a beautiful crocheted cotton lace border.
Enter to win this pretty tablecloth by telling me about your favorite vintage linens in the comments below. I’ll toss your name into a hat and draw a lucky winner in mid-November, when the Oct/Nov issue expires on newsstands. Stay tuned for more magazine-related giveaways!
If you’re not yet a subscriber to my magazine, MaryJanesFarm, subscribe here for $19.95/year.
This is a pretty little tablecloth. I do love the crocheted edge. My favorite vintage linens are the ones that also have embroidery on them as well. I love old pillowcases with embroidery and colorful crocheted edges the best.
I’m partial to crocheted doilies or dresser scarves. I also like huck cloth guest towels especially with monograms or the jacquard ones with patterns that pop when ironed just so.
My favorite vintage linens come from my grandmother and her sister (great aunt)
they were passes to my mom and now I have them, most of them are used on a daily basis.
My favorite vintage linens are handkerchiefs. Whether from a flea market or thrift shop, I can’t resist them.
My favorite vintage linens are the ones I inherited from my mother and mother-in-law. Not only are they beautiful, but they are priceless with their rich family stories and history. Each one tells of a different event or tradition.
For our wedding we received a doily with our last name crocheted into it. We keep it on our dresser in the bedroom. That one is my favorite, but when my mother was cleaning out the attic, she gave me a whole tote of doilies from my great grandmother! I was so pumped!
I enjoy thrift store shopping and antique malls, and love to collect doilies, tablecloths, tea cozies, dish towels, and Halloween potholders. I also have a big collection of cloth dinner napkins. Your coffee-stained tablecloth is just beautiful!
My favorite is the colorful vintage tablecloths I use for setting an old-fashioned breakfast table with china, a toast rack, salt and pepper shakers, a butter crock, and a jam pot. Bacon and eggs, hashed browns, toast, coffee, and fresh-squeezed orange juice, anyone? My inspiration came from old ’30s movies. I wanted to recreate that look.
I love the colorful vintage embroidered kitchen towels! 🙂
My favorite linens are 3 pairs of hand embroidered pillowcases that my mother and grandmother made; they have southern “belles” on the open edge. Also two large crocheted tablecloths that my grandmother made; one was for my mother when she was married. One is the pineapple pattern and the other is a medallion pattern.
I am privileged to have inherited my grandmother’s linens, many with her embroidered initials on them as they did back in the day. My personal favorites though were the 1920-30s cocktail sets, of placemats, tiny napkins, and even little petticoats for bases of the glasses, all intricately embroidered with what else, Roosters aka Cocks where the beverage’s name came from . Just so sweet.
I am a preschool teacher and have to wear a uniform shirt each day. I love vintage handkerchiefs, they remind me of the delicate way of life. That each day is unique and beautiful which inspires me with my 24 preschoolers. They always ask what I have in my smock pocket. i love to show them the beautiful flowers.
My favorite linens are all the doilies I have from my Grandmother and also my Husband’s Grandmother. I inherited a bag from each of these ladies after their passing. What a real treasure and wonderful memory of each of them. Someday my daughter will have two of her Great Grandmother’s family treasures.
Oh me, oh my! I love vintage linens. A favorite, hmm, I would have to say the tablecloths and pillowcases that are stitched and done with crochet or tatted edging. I have a few things that belonged to my mother, and great grandmother. I love using them. At first I was afraid to but then thought they were made to be used.
ohh…vintage linens…I collect and repurpose them into aprons, pillows and the such… I love the vintage pillowcases with embroidery, and if I find a single pillowcase at an antique store, etc., I will purchase it and repurpose it into an apron.. I never break up a set…those I would use on my bed! I have some of my mom’s and grandmothers linens that I use everyday….and, I tea dye linens to age them…my favorite would be the linen one on my bedside table made by my great grandmother…woven by her and intricately embroidered…I have a basket full of linen napkins on my kitchen table and one on the dining room table that are always in use at my house..even on “pizza day at Grammie’s”…stains soak out easily from vintage linens without harming them in oxyblast and cold water…overnight…the table cover pictured is really pretty!
I love the table runners and doilies my mother gave me before she passed away. There is no way I could “repurpose” any of these precious memories. I safely tuck them away and wish we could sit together one more time to share and reflect. They will forever be a precious reflection on a “time sealed in my heart’.
When I was young, I enjoyed watching my Grandmothers, one loved to crochet doilies and the other favored embroidering on pillowcases, dresser scarves and tea-towels. Such sweet ladies, I treasure the linens I inherited from them!
I’m collecting card table size vintage 30-40’s cloths found at yard sales and from my grandmother’s hand sewn collection. Want to have a 40’s tea party in my back yard next summer.
I love to collect vintage doilies, tablecloths, pillowcases, actually anything vintage…
I try to scoff up any doilies at yard sales to try to bring them back to a new life.
I have tried tea staining in the past, but never coffee staining. The results are lovely!
My favorite vintage linens are the ones that my great grandmother gave me. They were made by her and her mother. The have graced our family homes for well over a hundred years. Each stitch reminds me of her, and her love of our family and the care she showed to keeping a beautiful home.
My favorite linens are the candle-wicking embroidery pillow cases made by my grandmother who was the light of my life.
I search out my vintage linens at yard sales, rummage sales, online auction sites, flea markets, etc. Unfortunately, my Mother did not hang on to the linens passed down to her and all I have are the things my grandmothers gave to me directly. Luckily, my Mother stayed out of my Hope Chest and my “findings” were safe while I was in the Air Force until I married. I remember my Mother writing and asking if I “really want me to send you all these old things I found in your Hope Chest?” Have been building on those early beginnings ever since.
I love to find vintage ticking- whether it’s fabric remnants of used to make throw pillows. Blue is my favorite!
Love the tea-stained tablecloth. I love all vintage things. I have many of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers.i have made two of my daughters quilts with hand-worked pieces from four generations past, their mother (me), grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother. I framed pieces in barnwood frames for my third daughter. There were crocheted doilies, embroidered pieces, yo-yo squares, appliqes. Better to be displayed or used instead of hidden in a cedar chest.
I have kept all of the doilies, tablecloths, and bedspreads that my mother crocheted. My 1939 home are filled with them!
I have this beautiful tablecloth that has fruit on it! It’s nice and heavy with peaches, blueberries, apples and strawberries. I’m drawn to things with fruit on it!
I have several vintage tablecloths, dresser sets and hankies. Picking one is hard. The master bedroom uses the vintage items the most. My favorite ones would be the ones that have handwork on them.
I love the look of vintage fabrics and would like to incorporate them into my scheme of things! Thanks for the many ideas!
Somehow I can’t let go of a pile of vintage doilies, dresser scarves, chair arm covers that my mother had. Most were made by her mother and aunts! Wish I knew of fresh ideas for displaying them!
Vintage tablecloths are beautiful. I really like the coffee/tea stained product. I tried once with an old chenille bedspread. Not as nice as yours.
My favorite vintage linens are the ones that are handmade because each beautiful detail in the stitches reminds me of how much love and hard work goes into creating something special.
I love vintage pillowcases with embroidery and crocheted trim. My daughters used pieces of my grandmother’s unused crocheted trim around their bridal bouquets.
Vintage linens add so much to any table. I even put a linen on a patio table and it makes look more welcoming.
My favorite vintage linens are beautiful tone-on-tone ones (i.e. ecru linen with ecru embroidery, white crochet on white cotton, etc.) especially if the patterns originated in the “Old Country”. There is something so sentimental, historical, and meaningful whether you know the person who made the piece or not. To me, vintage linens represent the interconnectedness between women and also generations.
I have a few of my Mother’s Vintage linens that were left to me. I treasure them because she put her embroidery on them.
My favorite vintage linens are the old crochet doilies and hankies that belonged to my mother & mother-in-law.
I love all the old hankerchiefs I have from my Grandmothers and mother.
i have a beautiful embroidered doily that my husbands great grandmother created. We were all recipients of one when my husbands grandmother passed away. My dear husband made oak frames for each of his siblings with a description and gave one to each of them. what a beautiful memento for them all!
I have a collection of old linens, making pennant banners and adding buttons. Making handbags out of old flour sacks, and using potholders and hankies for pockets inside. and buttons too! I love the old linens no matter how stained or worn they are
My grandmother and her sister and husband all crocheted so I have tablecloths and doilies and kitchen towels that they made that are dear to me. The tea stained tablecloth would look lovely on the claw footed parlor table that inhabits my living room.
Hello from Ontario Canada
Love your magazine!
I collect vintage table squares and would love to add this one to my collection
The family trunk is full of little trinkets and heirlooms wrapped up in the old linens that protect them. The linens themselves are a work of art. I have a collection of my own now and can’t pass them by at thrift stores or auctions. Each piece makes me think of all the work someone did (I don’t sew or crochet). Thankfully someone else does! I’d love to add another piece to my collection. Thanks!
This takes me back to the treasures made by my grandmother- she loved making things when she had a little free time on the farm and shared those treasured pieces with her family.
Beautifully crochet works always remind me of my dear grandmother and the beautiful things she created over the years.
My favorite vintage linens are from my great grandmother, grandmother, great Aunt and my favorites are from the Aunt that helped raise me. But I always have room in my heart for one more. Thanks for the chance to win.
I am picking up all kinds of linens and doilies and pieces of lace to piece together for a bed skirt to put on our antique twin bed. As I pick these up I do wonder what home they came from. I like them tea/coffee died also.
My favorite vintage linens have to be my pair of pillow cases. Over fifty years ago my mother embroidered the pillow cases with beautiful red roses and green leaves, then she crocheted a lovely wide band on the bottom. Mother worked full time all of my growing up years and had little time for needlework, so this is an especially a sentimental item for me as she died last year at the age of 98.
My favorite? That is a tough one! But I think one of the most beautiful things ever was an apron made from an old, linen, toile blouse dropped in rit dye that was supposed to be red but turned out to be fuchsia:)=joy!
I’d love to win this tablecloth! Reminds me of the large crocheted cloth that was all scrunched up on the reception table when I got married 20 yrs ago. Beautiful effect! Thanks for your generosity!!