In a Quandary....

I never got around to finishing the small dome yesterday. Real life got in the way...

This morning I wasn't in the mood and I needed a couple of things from Michael's to work on the townhouse....No....I never got around to that either.

After Michael's for paint and a couple of other things, I decided to go to one of the antique malls that I had not been to in quite a while.

I wandered up and down the aisles, nothing hitting me in the eye. Then I spotted a bin in one of the booths full of bags of old linens. There were quite a few, but not a lot of small lace or fine fabric. I narrowed it down to four with a few possibilities and then from there to this one.

I assumed that the pieces would be in bad shape since that is usually why dealers group things like this together.

I saw that this one had three pieces of handmade lace. two collar pieces and a round piece of fine bobbin lace. It also had what looked like a good sized fine cotton table cloth with blue Chinese embroidery. I figured that there would be some spots on it somewhere....

To my surprise, when I opened the package, I saw that it was in pristine condition. What to do??? When something like this has spots and can't be cleaned up, I don't feel guilty about cutting it up and using it for minis.

Not a spot, hole or anything else wrong with it....Now I can't really justify cutting it up in tiny piece without guilt. The blue is a tiny bit faded in a few places, but...I am not sure that I can talk myself into cutting into it. Even the hem around the edge is amazing.

The lace collars and the bobbin lace doily aren't perfect, so I will use those first, while I debate on the table cloth.

The piece that made me decide on this particular bag was the handkerchief with the beautifully embroidered "R" in the corner. It's our initial. How could I leave it there to rot. It looks to be about 150 years old from the style of the lettering and the handwork. Too bad that one has a couple of holes. Some family loved it enough to save it and pass it down. I think that I will keep the tradition going.

April collects and uses old tea towels so she will get the two that you see in the photo.

Mookie got his share of the goodies also....I put them out on the floor to take the photo. I had to laugh. He went straight for a fine cotton percale pillowcase...It is embroidered with "His". He knew what he was doing....

Anyway, all in all, it turned out to be a pretty good morning for scavenging.

Now I have to go finish what I was supposed to do yesterday. I promise that I will finish the smaller dome today. Thanks for all of the nice comments on the larger one.

See you tomorrow.