French Oddities: Linen and lace scarf and the old bed cover

Last week, I was at one of my favorite second hand stores. In the bin of damaged vintage linens was a hand made white cotton filet lace bed cover. Once well loved and used, now relegated to the damaged bin at the second hand store. I love this type of find. Damaged means free license to cut up and repurpose.

For this repurpose, I went to Pinterest and in my "I could make this" folder was this scarf:

The scarf is from a French blog called Petites Choses. Here is the original blog from 2012. I love the look, but pulling off this type of scarf takes the right type of fringe and vintage lace.

Also in the same Pinterest folder is this scarf:

It is from a blog called stylewip, click here to see the original blog post from 2009. Again, the same idea, this time a solid cashmere knit for the scarf with lace used at both ends. This one is beautiful as well and is more do-able from a lace prospectus. At the same time less texturally interesting from the lace point of view than the first one.

Armed with ideas, it was time to wait for the right lace to fall into my stash. The right type of lace could be those vintage covers they used to put on the back and arms of chairs to keep the dirt off the chair's fabric. Easy to find in US antique shops. the problem is I am not in the United States and evidentially the French made the type to protect where the head hits the chair, but I have never found the part that covers the arms. At the second hand store I found something that would work in the vintage linen damaged bin

Now to my scarf... Here was my starting point: On the bottom is the bed cover:

Folded on top of that is a meter of loosely woven linen, I picked up in Paris, in a nice antique light brown color and on top of the linen is a box of threads and yarns I might be able to use.

The loosely woven linen would normally be used in curtains but, if washed turns soft and very useable for a scarf. The threads and yards have been bought at various yard sales and flea markets. All different weights of threads in linen, cotton and silk,

Now for the construction of the scarf. The width of the scarf is 27 cm (10.5 inches). The width was determined by the repeat size of the pattern of the fringed portion of the bed cover. The length of the filet piece without the fringe is 33cm (13inches) and the linen is one meter long (40 inches). The seam joining the linen and filet is flat felled so that the seam is finished from both sides. The sides were finished with a serger and then turned 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) and top stitched.

Love that #10 foot Edge Foot...but I digress... Talk about easy!

Did I mention the pattern on the edges of the bed cover are butterflies? I love butterflies in lace.

It would be done, except, the original fringe on the scarf edges looked shabby.

I know, I know, shabby chic is in, but this was just too shabby for my taste. It was knotted badly due to many washing and was just plain, well shabby.

I wanted something a little more elegant. Enter in all of those threads in the box. I picked out a variety in colors from white to brown that would blend together.

I even used the warp off of the loose woven linen fabric since it had a nice kinky thread effect.

Blending threads give such texture to any project. Proof of my texture statement is below once the shabby knotted portion was removed and replaced the multiple thread knotted fringe. The shortest fringe is around 8cm (3 inches), the longest is about 11cm (almost 4 inches)