New Life For Antique Hankies

I can't pass up a hankie. I love everything about them; the feminine prints, the delicate edges, the embroidery, the personal touches some have, everything. They are lovely, useful and sadly, very out of style. I picked up a whole stack of them at a yard sale a couple of years ago and since then, they've been languishing in a dresser drawer, just waiting to be used.

Last night, I had a brilliant flash of genius. It doesn't happen often, but when it does I jump on the idea :) I was so tired of these beautiful works of art being hidden away, so I can up with a couple of different ways to sew them together so I could sew them.

You see, I was wiping my table off after dinner, and I realized that the old oil lamp I keep there was starting to scratch the finish on the table. No that my table is a priceless antique or anything, but I wanted to keep my lamp there without any more damage to the table. I told my husband that I needed to buy a table runner and he said I should just make one. Brilliant!! I knew what I was going to do with those old hankies.

For the first runner, I just sewed 3 of them together on the corners. I used a decorative stitch on my sewing machine to do these. In retrospect, that wasn't such a good idea. The material on the hankies can be kind of fragile and I ended up having to really force my way through the foot of my sewing machine. I would use a nice, plain straight stitch if you plan of doing this. Learn from my mistakes!

For the second one, I just lined them up as best as I could with the printed sides together and ran a straight stitch along the seams. When I was all done sewing, I pressed the seams open so it would lay flat and called it a day.

The only thing I wasn't happy with, and this is minor, is that I ironed these before I went to photograph them and laid them on the back of the chair while I cleared the table. In that short amount of time, they got wrinkly :( If they were perfectly pressed before you put them away, and wrapped them in tissue for storing, they might not wrinkle as bad. Or, you could just iron real quick before you lain them out on your table. Or, I suppose I could try tossing them in the dryer to see if they would come out.

Anyway, there is one last way I wanted to show you that you can use old hankies in a new, pretty way. That second one, the one with 5 hankies sewn together? It makes a super cute scarf!!!

I think this Winter I'm going to tackle a hankie quilt for my cold weather project. I can't get enough of them- they're just too cool.

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