Utility glass buttons

In Berlin last year I was introduced to utility glass buttons. For some reason they were everywhere. They were new to me. I had never either seen them or really noticed them until I moved to Berlin. Having previously lived in France, buttons were something I looked at but not to buy. Usually people wanted 20 euro cents for one and that just seemed to be too expensive for me. 

This last week I went to the Quilt show held once a year in Alsace. It is the first time I went by myself which meant I was much faster at the exhibitions and had all the time I wanted to to shop the vendors. Oh what heaven that was! Walking the streets between exhibition sites there was a second hand shop. I like to stop into these. I don't expect anything in fabric to be found, but I do like to see if there is anything fun laying around.

"Do you understand the concept of the shop?" I was asked clearly in French by the volunteer working in the shop. " Yes" I answered. There was a sign that stated clearly in French that every item was 2 euros. Nosing around the shop, I found two large tin boxes of buttons. "How does the price work for buttons?" I asked as I pulled out a couple of carved mother of pearl buttons from one of the boxes. Thinking about it for a moment the volunteer said "If you buy both boxes you can have them all for 4 euros." Now I am the first to tell you that the box was filled with buttons I did not want, but the ability to go through the buttons later appealed to me so I agreed. The car was parked close by so I could drop them off before backtracking to the next exhibition. She did not charge me for the bits of lace I found (semi modern and rayon) nor the vintage spool of ribbon. She asked if she could keep the tin boxes as she could use them later for displaying items. I have kilos of buttons to go through now.

I returned back from the show on Monday morning. Wednesday I teach/ head up a small quilt group in Luxembourg. I am proud to say I am done with month 2 of the Craftsy.com block of the month offered earlier this year. Never mind that the class ended in August. You can watch it anytime so I thought now would be a good time to start. I bought the kit thinking that that would be a whole lot easier than trying to find fabrics in my stash to pack to come here. My goal is to have it done by the time I move again in December. I have not taken a picture of month 2, but here it is finished for month number 1.

Class ends at 3 pm so on the way home I stopped by a second hand store I go to once in a great while to see what they have. 

The topic of this blog today is utility glass buttons. There in the back, I could not believe my eyes. I found some, correction, I found many.

 I don't know why I like these. They are not the pretties that people like to collect, but I love the utility of them. They are just a little shiny and they have a nice weight to them. I have never seen them large like the ones on the card. Berlin had small ones. I also like that fact they are still attached to the card with a price of the back of 45 centimes. Now I have to think of a project to do with them.

At the same store I found this as well.

Ya, it is a sheet. I guess I collect them too. It looks to be cotton. The embroidery is cotton and it is in perfect condition. It will fit a double/queen bed. I love the fagoting. 

I do have the result from an unorthodox manner I used to remove rust from some lace. One of the pieces I bought in Paris had some rust staining where the pin holding a group of them together had begun to rust. If the rust damage is bad, there is nothing you can do. removing the stain removes what ever lace or fabric was there as the metal eats away at the threads. This one I could tell the damage was recent so I gambled and bought it anyway. 

I started by washing. No change to stain. 

I then put it in oxiclean. I do not recommend doing this to rust stains since it does exactly what you see  a couple pictures below. It makes it orange and spreads it out but it does not get rid of it. Biz does the same thing. So I began thinking...

The pots and pans in the apartment when we moved back in were filthy. I mean like this:

All of them. Nasty sticky burnt on never to come off yuck. I went on line and did some research about how to clean them. Everywhere I read suggested something called "Bar Keeper's Friend". I bought some, but only after everything else I tried did not work. So here is what it looks like now:

Now wait, the container clearly says it removes rust as well. What do I have to lose trying it on a lace bit. So here is the before, after it had been oxicleaned:

I can tell you from experience, that stain is not coming out no matter how long you soak it. Bleach does not work either, just a BTW...

I rubbed some "Bar Keeper's Friend" on it and left it damp for a couple hours and this is what it looks like:

Do you see it? One little area but the rest is gone. This is before I tossed it in the washer. It is totally gone now after the machine wash. I made sure to rinse it well before it was washed. I see no fiber damage. I doubt any will happen as the chemical is gone that cleaned it. Ya, it could have weakened the fibers, but I am not seeing that right now. I am going to wash it a couple more times and look for wear, but I don't think it is going to happen.

How cool is that?

A New Scarf

I am told that the one item of clothing every french woman (and man) has is a scarf. Not only for the look it adds to an outfit, but for warmth as well. The weather here in my northern corner of France is warm days and cool nights. That means if you are off somewhere in the morning a sweater and a light scarf are nice. 

Remember the vintage but slightly damaged curtains I bought in Paris? 

If you look closely there is a nice edging lace down both sides of the curtain. Lots of it and in very good condition

BTW...This curtain does not look anything like the picture now, but while it is a work in progress, and there were some surprises, some of the edging was used to make a scarf using the linen bought in Paris.


So here was my starting point:

The fabric is called linen voile. It is a loose woven linen that can be stiff until washed a couple of times. I like it because it squishes down nicely and although it wrinkles, the wrinkles just add to the charm of what ever I make. The vintage doily was another find at the same second hand store as the curtains. It's arrival date was July 17th. 

Some buttons were pulled as I was thinking I might want to use them for ornamentation.

So here is the completed piece.

It turned out beautiful, but I don't like it. It looks great on me but does not work with the way I like to tie my scarves. I will need to google to see what other ways I can tie it. I wore it yesterday and it is stunning, just not me, or not yet me. If it does not decide to be mine, have no fear, I will find a home for it.

 I made a paper copy with a picture of the scarf to one side. I made notes about what I would do different next time. I have the length and the width of all pieces noted as well as how I attached the side edging. 

I have this type of doily in my stash many times over from living here for years. It is in storage, but if I do not find another doily like it here in France, I will pull one of them and play this coming winter.

To attach the edging, first I had to hand baste the edging onto the linen taking into account the grain line. There was about 2cm (1 inch) extra fabric so it was not basted right to the edge. The edging was flipped up and using my machine zigzagged  up to but not touching the under side of the edging on the linen. The edging was ironed down and another row of zigzag stitches were applied on top of the edging. The left over linen was then trimmed away. This is the hardest part any other type of hem does not work. 

No post can be complete without me finding another example of mauvais français (bad French) in fabric.

Now I am not an expert in this matter, but this one had me giggling so much that I bought it. It came from a department store in Germany and it was on sale. Maybe someone else did not like the use of French. It is an infinity scarf:

Frenglish! I love it! Now assuming you are trying to say Eiffel Tower of Paris, great that is English. To say it in French would be Tour Eiffel de Paris.

I got a nice comment from Quinn asking a question:

Quinn September 10, 2016 at 11:45 AM

What lovely treasures! And I must ask what you use to wash fabrics with, to remove that mold smell. Just yesterday I opened an old storage box and found vintage table linens and scraps of lace trimming that I would love to use again, but the mold smell is terribly strong. I don't know if airing outdoors will help, but first they must be washed anyway. Do you have a recommendation? Thanks, and welcome back to the blog-world :)

Quinn, Thanks you for you comment and yes, it is good to be back.

No airing will do nothing much for what you have. Mold is not going anywhere. I hate that! 

I am rather unorthodox in what I do and it is because I am going to use the items. If they can not stand up to washing then I can't sew with them. If it is length of lace, I tack it together before I wash it so that it does not become a tangled mess. Lace and small bits go in a lingerie bag. If it is table linen I don't do anything special for them before I wash them unless they have something that could get damaged. Those I place in a pillow case and I baste the top shut. 

Most likely what you have are sturdy linen or cotton items. Those I just toss in the washer. No bleach, regular soap that you use, warm wash, warm rinse and line dry. Linen sheets I put in the dryer just until they get hot so that the wrinkles work themselves out a bit.

Now I look over the items for stains. Biz is my stain remover of choice, oxiclean is a second choice. DO NOT place any item that you can tell has a two toned thread as both products will take the two tone look away leaving what you have flat looking. An example of that thread is the background to my blog. That particular thread was commonly used and it is two toned and Biz or oxiclean will ruin the two tone look.

 Two tones I soak in either laundry soap (like I am pre-soaking) I will leave this for days

If you have rust, good luck with that. I have found very little that takes rust out and the metal normally eats away the lace. I am trying some things now that I will let you know if they work.

Bonjour à Nouveau France!

Yes, I know, it has been a while since I posted last. Two years ago I left France for Berlin Germany. After six months in Berlin it was off to the United States. At that point I quit posting on my blog. Since the United States, there has been a three month move to China, no chance of being able to post on my blog there, and now after a short vacation in the United States, I am back in France. Not forever, just four months. But those four months, I should have time to post again! What is it about Europe that makes me able to be creative.

Two weeks ago, I flew into Paris CDG. It was a perfect time to spent a long weekend exploring Paris. Why not take a little down time to explore the sites with the hope of finding a weekend flea market or a fun second hand store? Of course the fabric district was on my list of stops.

Yes to all three. I found the second hand store, I found a flea market and I had time to buy fabric at one of the stores in the fabric district. Also, there was time to stop at wine bars and meet up with friends for dinner. It was a good weekend.

So what did I find?

I found a second hand store that carried sheets and towels. Normally into that mix is the occasional old item that I might be searching for. I got lucky. In the very back of the store were old goodies were heaping over the edge of a small basket. The shop had put a sticker on everything with the date it arrived in the store and the price. Unlike a flea market everything was washed but not ironed. This sticker shows that the item arrived on the 17^th of August 2016 and that it cost 4.50 euros. The item with the sticker is a pillow case with beautiful hand fagoting around the edges. I love fagoting and love it even more when it is done on linen. Only thing missing were the buttons.

After Berlin, I have many vintage linen covered buttons I can sew on. I am not sure there ever were buttons on it as there were no marks. I am not even sure the pillowcase was ever used based on it’s condition. 

Mine now and with the buttons sewn on it, it is already in use on the bed.

At the same store, I also found a pair of curtains also dated on the 17^th of August. 

Maybe from the same donor? Here is a picture of one of the two. 

The knotting on one of them has holes but the condition otherwise looked pretty good.

I found a couple of doilies as well.

At the flea market I found lots of lace bits. I had to come back to the stall as there were 5 Chinese tourists buying all sorts of items. One of them spoke French and was trying to bargain like they do in China. I now know what that is like as I was there for 9 weeks working this summer. The shop keeper would have none of it. No matter what the Chinese woman said in trying to bring the price down, she held firm. I enjoyed watching the two cultures, I now have a better understanding of, clash over how one buys things at a flea market. In the end the final tally was 360 euros (around $400 US) they bought a lot of things for that money. Her prices were good. They were interested in completed garments. As they, the Chinese tried to negotiate I was able to get into a corner of the stall to watch the action and conveniently, while I was there, to sift through two boxes of lace bits. I found some beautiful things in those boxes. 

Once the Chinese had left with 2 large bags of garments, the shop keeper turned her attention to me. She tallied up what I had bought. “It is refreshing that you did not try to negotiate prices with me” she said clearly in French. I told her that I had just moved to France from China and that the negotiating was the way most everything was done. She told me the Chinese negotiate too hard which is why she does not negotiate prices with them anymore. “My price is what it is.” She told me. She then counted 14 items as 10, took 12 euros off of my total and threw in a small bag of lace bits.

So what did I get? I got a selection of lace medallions the top from an undergarment and meters of beautiful lace. All of it needed washing as, as usual, it smelled like mold.

The last stop was the fabric district. I found some linen. I bought the rest that was on the bolt. I only needed about 1 meter of two of them so give or take a couple of centimeters, who cares? The man cutting the fabric gave me a deal on both of them. 

At Coupon de Saint Pierre I bought 2 three meter pieces of a very light weight silk. I have a Craftsy.com class I want to do on sewing light weight fabrics. I bought the class, watched it but, in my stash I did not have the correct type of fabric. Now I do.

The sewing machine is off and running. it is about time!