I’ve been making pin cushions out of damaged, vintage embroidered tablecloths.
The embroidery was done in the Forties and Fifties and I only recently realised the pattern was already printed onto the linen so in that sense it was easy as they had a pattern to sew on.
You can tell how good the person was at embroidery partly because sometimes they didn’t cover the lines properly so you can see bits of the printing which should have been covered.
The real art though is in the colours. I’ve been collecting vintage table cloths for 20 years and so often I’ll see one which has been expertly made yet the colours aren’t very inspiring and I always think what a shame to have worked so hard and spent so many hours making it yet the result isn’t too enchanting. That’s unfortunately the case with most of them which is why when I find ones like these it’s like finding gold dust.
I wonder about the ladies who made them. Were they young, middle aged, elderly ? How did they even have time to embroider tablecloths when they had so much else to do, cooking from scratch, hand washing, looking after their families etc without all the mod cons we have.
Saying that though, they didn’t have televisions and if I didn’t watch so much TV I could probably embroider at least a couple of large table cloths every week 🙂 I’m glad they did it though so I don’t have to.
So here they are all together. I’ve also added some vintage fabric flowers to make them even more colourful and scrumptious.
And here they are all dressed for Easter.
I think a pin cushion should be beautiful because it’ll be next to you while you sew  year after year. Mine is one of the very first things I made and I still love it.
Encouraging comments on Face Book
I’m just realizing that the amount of people that see my posts on Face Book
directly correlates to the amount of people who leave a comment.
 I get a few likes sometimes which is always nice and shows that people have seen the posts but it’s the interaction that counts, which means commenting about the post. The more comments the more people get to see it. I don’t know how Face Book works but comments seem to generate action.  I’m not very good at explaining things I don’t understand !
I’m a culprit myself. I’ll see something nice on someone’s page and press the ‘like’ button but not often comment because I can’t think what to say and whatever I do say sounds phoney or cheesy and it’s a bit cringe….. I don’t always want to comment anyway, I just want to ‘like’ and go. But now I realize that it’s the comments that make the Face Book world go round I shall make much more effort to do so.
I’ve also noticed and been told by  social media expert Lindsay that if you don’t comment on people’s posts or they don’t comment on yours that Face Book now don’t show you those posts any more and not only is that a real shame but when you have a business (fan) page it’s  also detrimental. FB now want people to pay for posts  to reach more people which does work as I’ve tried it but I’d much rather deal in comments than £££.
To encourage such comments I’ll do little competitions sometimes on my page which is what I made these cards for. That was all a bit long winded wasn’t it. Never been good at explaining myself, sorry xx Press this !
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Tagged as Etsy, Face Book, Face Book comments, Face Book fan page, floral, flower cards, Flowers, Good Luck, Gorgeous Things, Handmade, handmade cards, Happy Birthday, Happy Mother's Day, London, Muswell Hill, Nicky Grace Vintage Fabric & Goregous Things, UK, Vintage Fabric, vintage fabric cards, Vintage fabric cut flowers, Vintage Gifts