French mattress ticking

I have long had a thing about French mattress ticking, but this year have been lucky enough to find a couple of particularly old pieces.  How do I know they are so old?  Well, because they have little hand sewn eyelets placed strategically over the ticking, these were used to lace the ticking down to the old wool or horse hair filled mattresses.

My favourite piece could pass itself off as a Ralph Lauren design with its bold red, beige and black stripes.

So periodically I get them out of the cupboard and hum, and ha, and muse with the idea of making cushions etc.  Today I wondered about grosgrain ties through the eyelets, or cushions made up with linen from my postal bags.

What would you do with this fabric?  I've already sold pieces like this and I know they've gone to excellent homes, maybe I should just let go of these too ...

French laundry day

 When I have large quantities of sheets and linens to wash and dry, I always think of what it must have been like for the women who first cared for these fabrics without the help of washing machines.

I wash all our old linens in the machine then simply hang them out to dry behind the barn.  100 years ago the women  would have been down on their knees at the village lavoir, before carrying the heavy sheets out to dry flat on the grass in a meadow.   Today these lavoirs or wash houses are carefully preserved, but thank goodness nobody needs to take their laundry any more!

I actually quite enjoy caring for the linens, they smell good after blowing dry in the garden and of course they look so beautiful once freshly pressed.  Time I am happy to invest!  Right now I am preparing new sheets for the store.

Tomorrow I start my new series about my stylish French girlfriends!  Don't miss the first episode, how they dress; where they live, how do they cook and of course why they look so great!

A demain!

linen grown here

You all know how I love the old French linen sheets, 

nothing compares for sleeping well, warm in winter, 

cool in the summer.    What I also love is the flax, 

used to make those sheets,  growing  in the June fields

and colouring our valley in a patchwork of blue fields.