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Many people share my passion for old linens, but not everyone dares use them on a regular basis for fear of damaging them, or that it will be too difficult to take good care of them.
Most of the linens I buy here are between 100 and 150 years old: heavy homespun linen and metis (linen and cotton mix), with hand embroidered monograms and meticulously hem-stitched edges.
Here are a few tips I have picked up along the way, when caring for and using my old french linens here at home.
Tip number one
ENJOY!
So now you’ve bought your first linen sheets, or embroidered pillow shams, or red-striped teacloth, there’s little point in hiding them away. They are to be enjoyed, to be relished in, to give you a little daily thrill!
And hey! A bed made up with antique sheets will always look good, even if you don’t have time to pull the sheets straight as you get out of bed!
Tip number two
MIX AND MATCH
Monograms that really match your initials were fine in the days when young girls had their trousseau sewn just for them, and had everything handwoven and embroidered to their taste. That is no longer the case today, and we use the linens because we love their texture and we admire the beauty of the handwork.
I happily mix different shams with a monogrammed sheet, or different lace finishes.
For my daughter’s bed, she loves to mix an antique sheet with an IKEA bed set!
Tip number three
DON’T BE AFRAID
These linens are strong! They are survivors, although they look so delicate, when they were made over a century ago, they were to be washed by maids kneeling down at village washhouses and pounding the living daylights out them on flat stones! Providing they have no lace, and that they are in strong fabric with no visible tears or worn patches they can take normal use and maintenance.
Tip number four
MACHINE WASH
I wash all our linen sheets in a machine, the only things I handwash is any small items or clothes in lace, or an ornate embroidered tablecloth.
The only things I hand over to a professional are the antique boutis or quilts, that are simply to heavy for me to handle wet, and tricky to dry.
Tip number five
DRY OUTSIDE
If you can avoid the tumble dryer and dry outside, this is really worthwhile. A dryer removes lint from the fabric and it simply doesn’t feel as heavy and ‘true’. The sheets will be flatter and smoother to the touch if they have dried in the fresh air, Chances are they’ll be sweeter smelling too.
Before the days of effective whiteners and detergents, the sheets were not hung but laid to dry in meadows, flat on the ground! The chlorophyll from the grass is said to whiten the colour of the sheet as it dries.
Tip number six
IRON
OK, so this one is actually optional. Some people hate to iron, and some love it. Personally I enjoy sleeping in beautifully pressed sheets, or wearing smooth flat linen, and I love to see a pile of perfectly ironed tea cloths, – to each their own!
Tip number seven
GIFT
Chances are that if you love linens, then so will your nearest and dearest: sisters, aunts and girlfriends. A simple teacloth, hand towel or pillow sham makes a very special gift.
Tip number eight
STORE CAREFULLY
I like to store my linens, and my vintage fabrics, piled flat in cupboards, to be easily found and sorted when needed. I always have a stash of lavender sachets to slip beneath a sheet or in a pile of cloths
Tip number nine
COLLECT!
The supply of these linens will run out one day, the old houses are being emptied, the contents sold off, but in a few decades from now that will be finished. Collect and savour these treasures, and who knows, you may find that you pass your passion for beautiful textiles on to a daughter or a niece who will love to use them herself one day.
Tip number ten
STAINS – UGH!
This does happen, you can buy an old sheet that looks wonderful when you gave it a quick once over at a fair, but once home and laid out properly there are a couple of small stains or spots of rust. Most of the time a good long soak in warm water and a mild dertergent before machine washing will do the trick, but there are a couple of exceptions:
rust spots – you know those tiny orange brown coloured spots that usually occur when the fabric has been in contact with metal. Here in France there are special ‘rust removers’, but they rarely live up to their claims. I have found lemon juice, white vinegar and salt left on the marks, and the fabric laid in the sun for a couple of hours can often work, but even that isn’t foolproof.
I always try to avoid using bleach. It is way too aggressive, and should only ever be used by dabbing with a cotton bud and rinsing quite quickly!
In my experience the most difficult spots to eliminate are grey mould spots, if the fabric has been damp , and a yellow fold line if a sheet has been folded in a cupboard for many years . If I see either of these marks on a sheet, I generally steer well clear![blank]
And finally: I am sometimes asked why old French linen sheets have a centre seam. If you are looking for an old sheet then a centre seam is a good thing! It is a sure sign of its age because up until the early 1900’s linen was only woven in narrow cloth, so you needed two widths to cover a bed!
50 comments
Hello Sharon,
It's my first comment on your blog I discovered fews days ago and I have to say that it's a wonderful blog. Thank you for all you are sharing ! I am a french woman and I love english culture. Wa are a family of five and we currently are living in England for 6 months for a long term home exchange to discover your country in family…My 3 girls are in an english school and after our return in France next January, english culture will keep a great part of our life,…so do your blog in my life from now. MERCI ! Valérie
Oh how I adore this post!! I love vintage French linen, and have a fabulous metis sheet that I have not used yet!! Thank you for the encouragement to truly enjoys these artisan pieces. My daughter makes jokes about how I should just roll in my linen! Ha! She's right!!
Lovely way to begin my day!
Hope your week is delightful,
Becky
Luxurious and so beautiful!
Love this post. I have many French vintage sheets and I use them all the time, launder them regularly and they come out looking great. I use them for tablecloths, bed linens (mostly to top a duvet), curtains and shower curtains (hung by clips). They are indeed very sturdy and they bring pleasure to me every day.
You have some of the most beautiful textiles and quilts. They all look so white and crisp and I appreciate the tips for washing and storing them. 🙂
Well I don't have any french linens (yet) but the linens I have collected I use as with all the things I collect. I adopted a motto for myself that if it's too precious to use or if something gets broken accidentally and my world is shatter then I don't collect it. Life is too short so I'll take the first point to heart…ENJOY…life is too short:)
Goodness Sharon – you even make hanging out the washing and doing the ironing look and sound both elegant and desirable!!!
Paula x
your images and tips are gold.
i don't have a ton, but i love using them! for a tree skirt, for recovering two counter stools, sheets for tablecloths…
i will never tire of them.
smiles to you.
michele
Wonderful tips, beautiful linens! We have a piece of rough, nubby vintage fabric thrown over the table in our breakfast nook, and I've always wondered what was the best way to clean it. Nice to know it's as simple as throwing it in the washing machine and giving it a good pressing.
Have a wonderful week, Sharon! XO
Your linen always looks so white & beautifully ironed. It's true they should be used and not just collected & stored in a cupboard. Your comments & tips have inspired me to get mine out & I will use them, even though I hate ironing !
Best wishes Barbara Lilian
Such a great post and your photos are beautiful! Old linens are one of the great joys to collect….thanks for the tips
xx kelley
Thank you for the tips, I don't own french linens but I do own a few that are from the early 50's and I use them pretty often, I love the look of them.
have a wonderful day!
XXX Ido
All I can say is "Ahhhh…:)"
Oh my! I think you can read my mind. I was going to write you an email and even started it a couple of times, to ask you about linen. I really want to have a set or two of 100% linen sheets, but there is no way I can do white. I found that Restoration Hardware is now offering Linen sheets at a pretty good price. Thank you for the information you provided!
Great tips Sharon.
I have a few pieces of linen bedding and ALL of my tea towels are made of linen and they get softer with age and it's so difficult to part with them when they get holes in them with so much use!
I enjoy your blog so much.
Ce linge ancien est une vraie merveille !
Nell
These antique linens are so pretty. They make me drool. I don't like having stuff around that I don't use – these are such great tips.
The linens are gorgeous. I enjoyed your post. The tips are so great.
Hi Sharon, not sure if you know this trick for getting rid of mould, or whether it would work on your fabulous linens, but when we get mould on anything, and we live in the tropics in Australia, so that is a regular occurance, we spray a diluted mixture of Oil of Cloves and it kills the mould spores and they then drop off after you wash the fabric or whatever else it was on. Sometimes, with very stubborn marks, you still need to bleach the spores to get rid of the colour but if you have treated the area with the clove mixture, the mould should not come back. The mixture we use is about 1 Teaspoon of Oil of Cloves into 1 Litre of water put into a squirty bottle and very lightly mist on to fabric, leave for a few hours, wash and try again a bit heavier if it doesn't work the first time. Obviously, I would test this on a small patch before using all over your most precious linens, just to make sure it doesn't have any undesirable side effects. Thought this may be handy if you had some linens with mould marks on them that you hadn't been able to get rid of. Michelle 🙂
I have seen your linens hanging on the line to dry, first hand! and did you know I don't own an iron? nor do I ever want one! xo
Thank you Sharon. These are wonderful tips!
I recall the birthday party when a friend of mine gave (to a friend of hers I really didn't know well) a set of vintage linen placemats and napkins. Her friend opened the package, immediately began exclaiming(they were, indeed,pretty) all sorts of appropriate things….and she ended by saying "Oh, I don't know WHAT I'm going to DO with these! They're just PRECIOUS!!!!".
My friend (a very practical woman whom I['ve known since I was 22) got a bit fed up with the preciousness, so to speak, of the fuss and flatly announced "Oh god…it's not that BIG of a deal…it's LINEN….they used to wrap mummies in this stuff….it lasts FOREVER….."
that's what I happen to like about old linen….it LASTS, if you follow a few simple rules.
I used to grow flax (it has beautiful, tiny, blue flowers at the end of each stem in June around here) in a back garden in my old house. It was always fun to cut a delicate-looking grass-like stalk for a guest, hand it to them, and then tell them "Try to tear that in two…."
The final fact(as any anthropologist will tell you) is that linen and silk are the two toughest, most durable fabrics on earth. Isn't that a fascinating fact?
As far as I can gather, linen is to fabrics what Bette Davis was to actresses.
Level Best as Ever,
David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
P.S. I meant ARCHEOLOGIST, not "anthropologist".
Having unhappily dated one of each during my twenties, I hope I can be forgiven for subconsciously lumping them all together….
–david terry
Oh Dear, I always get a confirmation from you that I do right.As I decided to furnish our guest cottage I inherited some pillow shams from my mother in law, and gradually toyed with the idea to collect old bed linen for the beds of the old cottage.I never cared of the different monograms since they could have been those of my ancestors.In the last few years old bed linen in relatively good condition became rare on brocante fairs, though sometimes I can bargain and get good prices.I collect mostly the pillowshams and sometimes the quilt covers too(the later have different sizes as nowadays), meanwhile I also try to make the embroidered monogramms of my daughter myself (far more not so perfect as the early ones)
regards from the moisty Hungarian Plain Dorka http://www.dorottyaudvar.co.hu
Grand advice – and it has heighten my appetite for linen once again.
Well, I need the encouragement because I've definitely ruined some wonderful antique fabrics. Has made me gun-shy to ever use them again. I was young and stupid, thinking I could just throw certain things into the washing machine to brighten them up. These aren't, I guess, the heavy type of linen you're referring to as antique French ones but, instead, something more delicate, which just couldn't hold up. I sort of never got over it, to think I ruined something beautiful entrusted to me in the family, painstakingly handmade by an ancestor. (And I soon paid for more ignorance by thinking I could add bleach to the load to whiten. Horrors.) I'm also intrigued that you can send out vintage quilts as I think "to whom" because there's certainly no one in my neck 'o the woods that does anything like that (I took a 100-year-old, hand-hooked rug from Pakistan to get it cleaned and they just looked at me and said, "no;" this coming from a well-established dry cleaner of 40 years, who said it wouldn't be eco-friendly as it was too weighty and would require too much cleaning fluid in addition to taking an unspecified amount of time to dry; maybe this is a disadvantage of living in suburbs with less amenities). I will try to "get brave" and consider your excellent advice; I did enjoy this post (and reader comments) very much!
I absolutely LOVE vintage linens. I have been collecting a piece or two here and there. My dream someday is to travel to France and Belgium and go to the markets. The thought just gives me goosebumps. Thank you for the tips.
Dear "vicki"…
Regarding rugs? I gather you live in the suburbs, so you can probablydo what I do each year…..which is to wash my own rugs.
I'm lucky in that I now have a very large, flagged courtyard, but I've done this even when all I had was a driveway.
I wait until Summer (which gets REALLY hot here in North Carolina), simply spread the rugs out, soak them down with the hose, wait for that to heat up in the sun, and then douse them with a bucket or two of diluted woolite. then, I get down on my hands and knees and scrub away with one hand while I direct the hose with the other….it's not hard, and the filth/dirt just comes FLYING out. afterwards, I simply leave them to drain and dry in the sun for a day or so. Ilearned this "trick" from a longtime friend who's a prominent collector of genuinely valuable orientals (amusingly enough he ow one very large Persian that the Metroplitan tries to buy every year, since they now own its matching, fully-documented twin). He's the one who initially told me (I was in my twenties and had just inherited a couple of old rugs) that the dry cleaning was TOO EXPENSIVE (he's a notorious miser, if a good friend) and, more importantly, too destructive to the rugs. People always experess shock that he doesn't "send out" his rugs. He invariably laughs and reminds them "Oh, please…..these rugs spent 100 years rolling around in camel dung in some Bedouin or Afgahni tent….they're TOUGH…"
So, I always follow his advice. It's actually quite fun doing this each Summer….who doesn't like playing around with the hose all afternoon during a heat wave?
Advisedly yours as ever,
David Terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
This is a wonderful post. Thank you for sharing your tips and I agree they are to be loved, collected, shared and used. I'm so happy I found your blog. Lovely indeed.
These are great tips, Sharon. Thank you! I dream of covering my entire bed in vintage French linens someday.
Next time I'm in France, I'm hitting the brocantes!
Speaking of which, will you please send me information about your 2013 brocante tour? I'd like to tell my Mom about it. What a fun mother-daughter adventure that would be!
How I adore monograms of any sort, sheets, towels, old, new. I had a recommendation of something to soak linens in that is amazing-from my grandmother! accordingtobraswell.com
Beautiful shots Sharon… and I am a fan too… Antique linens have been my passion for a long time…and like you I don't think they will be around forever… xv
A wonderful and informative post which I will refer to time and time again I'm sure to care for my small collection of antique linens. Yours are absolutely magnificent!
Sharon, your posts do generate good conversation! Allow me to send a thanks to the ever-informed and interesting David Terry; David, I do appreciate the good advice. I tried to wash a patchwork quilt once and it was quite an ordeal, laying bedsheets down on the grass, then the quilt, and more bedsheets to protect from sun-fading; it was so darn heavy to pull out of the bathtub and the vintage fabric began to separate at the seams. Never again! But the rugs, visions of hauling them on a line and beating at them? No way. (First of all, no line except a huge rope would support the weight.) I have big dogs. They live in the house. They throw up. They pee. We have accidents. With the way I live, things need washing from time to time! Hosing the vintage rugs off at home is definitely more eco-friendly! I sometimes just don't think practically of how something can be accomplished. Hmmm, maybe I'll burn some calories when I give this a go…
A very useful read, thanks Sharon!
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I LOVE this about linens, I am slowly collecting but never have enough, I mean slowly, in the states, a lady her sells her sheets for $1000.00, I can’t go that route, do you have any sources I can visit to buy more? I love linens and grabbed some linens napkins recently with monogram’s of all letters, they are gorgeous……I so wish to buy more bed linens…..thank you for this advice……and input…..I am building my drying line now outside my little cottage to hang my linens, love this……thank you, xo
How beautiful! Wish I knew about you sooner.
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I am sure you know this, but didn’t see it here in the comments. If you have rust stains on white linen/cotton… whatever, squeeze fresh lemon juice on the spots and hang in the sun till dry… they disappear. The sun is an important part of the method. I didn’t believe it but it worked.
I’m so happy I blundered on to your site. I have one wonderful monogrammed sheet with a proclaimed Rothschild (sp?) provenance. The linen is so lightweight it feels like down and I’ve really been afraid to use it other than to make up the guest room bed for very quiet-sleeping and short-staying guests. Better on our bed than moldering in the linen closet, so it goes on the bed today. I have four beautiful linen towels which have the initial monogram and the number 12- would these have belonged to someone who lived in a boarding house? I’ve always wondered about the numbers and have occasionally seen similar ones at antique fairs. Thanks for all the wonderful advice.
I also just stumbled upon your site. Don’t own any linen sheets but would like to start collecting but where in the Midwest does one find these beautiful treasures??
I found lovely site called Rough Linen but they are all new.
This is fascinating. I have old linen inherited and thought to give it to charity shops but now have second thoughts!
Thank you all very much for the advice about using lemon juice vinegar and salt for rust stains and using diluted clove oil for mould! Also great advice from David about rugs! I have carpet moth in the oriental rugs too so hosing them in the hot sun on the patio might give them a shock! tried everything else but not toxic chemicals.
Always have had a love for old lace and linens. If anyone has a cherished piece of lace that is a family heirloom I can make a painting of it. Just another idea how to live with fancy heirlooms of the past.
I have a number of antique french linen sheets and tablecloths that were passed down from great grandmother in France. They’ve been lingering in my loft for many years and I’ve never really had a use for them. The fabric is beautiful and some are monogrammed and embroidered but they bear signs of wear: rust spots, slight stains, patches and small holes. |Anyone know a good place to sell them other than ebay? I’m in the UK.
Thank you for your advice on how to care for these linen sheets. I just picked up four of them plus about 10 teatowels at a ‘vide maison’ yesterday. After reading this article I think I’ll go back and pick up more of them as they had a lot and it is still on today!
old linen should be soaked in water with a little sea salt borax,baking soda,bicarbonate of soda take your pick mix and leave for min 24 hours possibly 2 days.turning a few times in that time frame.
water to hydrate the fibers the salt brine for the alkaline ph.
slow hydration rather than shock to the fabric system.
avoid modern detergents make washing soda sometimes called soda crystals your friend.
museums in the uk do not go in for modern nasty treatments even for something so basic as cleaning cloth.
washing soda,borax,castille soap,vinegar you can even add a few drops of your favorite essential oil.
for bleaching whites small amounts of
citric acid powder.
oxyclean which is 30% Sodium percarbonate the rest washing soda.
look into natural cleaning products better for you and for old old linen.
avoid anything with optical brightners in not good.
washing soda a little borax and some grated lavender soap for a regular wash is a natural and powerful tool.
after your linen has been soaked for 24 hours plus.
I came looking for advice as I just washed two french linen sheets and dried them in the dryer. The amount of lint was horrifying! I can dry with a dehumidifier and a rack. I washed with soap nuts, borax and some blachisseur tyhat is meant for soap nuts. Will remember the soak and wash trick next time. Thank you:) I am just getting into old french linen. I have borax, soap nuts, sodium bicarb, washing soda, vinegar, and will stick to those for washing them, with some oil of lavender perhaps. We are in a holiday home in deep vrai France.