I bought this old Christmas pillowcase at the market on Sunday. While I was ripping out the seams so I could use it as a skirt on my living room desk, I discovered that the bells were actually gold once upon a time, and not green as they appear to be now. It was musty smelling, so I had rinsed it in the sink and air dried it today. I was afraid to machine wash it or oxi-clean it because of the red. It is a good thing I didn't put any oxi-clean on it in retrospect.
In case you haven't learned this lesson through a horrible laundry accident already, oxi-clean causes a chemical reaction with the old gold paints/dyes and it will leave nothing but big holes where the gold once was. (You don't really want to see what happened to my Christmas tablecloth before I knew this information.) Had I been too quick with the Oxi, I would have had nothing left. Clearly I need to be careful to do a little excavating when cleaning old Christmas linens.
Oh, pretty! That looks lovely. I can't wait to get my holiday decorations up, but we will wait until after the festivities of Sadie's birthday are over.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pretty linen! We're going to be putting up Christmas stuff this coming weekend when John comes home. Good to know about the OxiClean.
ReplyDeleteGood tip! I didn't know that. I was actually planning to Oxy some old Christmas linens this week. I'll be sure to check them for the gold first.
ReplyDeleteThe skirt looks great! Do you always have one there or is it just for Christmas?
Rebecca, I always have a tablecloth or something there. I hide Jack's dumptruck under that desk!
ReplyDeleteSo lovely,what a great tip!
ReplyDelete