Thank you so much for the info/formula...

My Mom used to dampen laundry (to be ironed) and put in a plastic bag in the freezer and then pull it out when she was ready to iron. :-) (Hmmm, I don't remember ever having to go into the freezer looking for anything either!)

Marysewfun

Yes, I remember a neighbor used to "stiffen" her doilies so they would sort of ruffle on the table and then put a candy dish or lamp in the middle. Oh, the fun of memories! :-)

Marysewfun

I used this recipe to starch the brim of one my sunbonnets about a year ago. I wore the sunbonnet recently - that brim was STILL stiff from this stuff.

Wow, that sounds like hard work, and I know it was. And we think we have it tough! :lol:

That is an old one - I remember my mother always made starch this way. She would be 114 years old if still living.
She also used blueing in the rinse water to whitten the whites. My how things have changed.

Mrs. Stewart's Concentrated Liquid Bluing
in the laundry aisle at my local grocery store

My mom used to always sprinkle her laundry, roll it up put it in a plastic bag, and place it in the fridge over night. Boy, does that bring back childhood memories.

That's the one, did not know it was still around. My mother also sprinkled the clothing and rolled it up, put in a bushel basket overnight, then ironed the next day. Yes, sometimes old memories are the best, but always keep an eye on tommarow.

Jackie, I am old enough I remember making starch to do my cotton clothes and laundry! Starched and ironed all cotton dresses, aprons, blouses, skirts, husbands shirts, kids school clothes, table cloths, pillow cases,dresser scarves, doilies, etc. With the onset of permanent press and automatic driers, it went by the wayside. I learned all this from my sweet mother who did that and most of the early years in laundry tubs outdoors and we carried water in buckets, heated in a tub over a fire and hung things on a line. "Good old days"? Sometimes I think they were, but I am grateful we don't have to do it now. :)

So do I!! It's fun to do and they save a lot of money. :-) :-) :-) :-)

Faultless Starch was what I used . Cold starching will make the material stiff if you Iron it while its still wet. Cold starch not cooked

If you don't have time to iron all your fabric you can put it in a ziploc bag
and put it in the fridge for a day or two or in the freezer for long period.
I've never used the freezer myself but that's what Anita Grossman said in
her article about starch. I like to put my starched fabric overnight in the
fridge regardless of time. It helps distribute the starch more evenly.[/quote]

This is what we did in the OLD DAYS when everything was ironed. If you didn't want to startch then you just sprinkled with water, rolled clothes up and placed in frig. Worked really well. But now days I iron very few things. Much easier and better IMO.

I have bought 'bluing' in the laundry department of some grocery stores. Also try Bi-mart, they have everything.

Starch - Last week, I got in a pair of men’s denim shorts that had a large tear in the seat by one hip pocket. The shorts had been washed and starched heavily, and were a challenge to turn through my machine to do the mending. I was afraid that I was going to break them! I felt like I’d been in a wrestling match when I was done.

Sugar - Years ago, back in the 70s, us young “cowboys” would put a “reasonably priced” (cheap, because we were always broke) felt cowboy hat into the bathtub, run water on it while we smunched the heck out of it to get the water to soak through the felt, and then applied regular table sugar with our hands, rubbing it in until it wouldn’t take any more. Then we’d give it a rough shaping and put it up on the pickup radio antenna to drip dry for a bit. While we were waiting for it to drip, it was a good time to rinse out the tub, especially if it wasn’t your tub. Then, we’d wear it to finish drying it, and every once in a while for the next few hours we’d give it another more specialized “shaping” to eventually get just the right block. Once it was nearly dry, we’d brush the excess sugar off with a shoe brush, and give it a quick wipe with a wet rag. Walaa! Your hat was formed for that personal look, fit your head like a glove, and would stay that way for a long time (if you didn’t break it first). Put the personalized outer band and the special hat pins back on it to make the statement that you wanted to be known for, and you were good to go.

Of course, your hat attracted every bee in the county, so you had to keep moving. And don’t dare swat at them with the hat or you could break it. And should you get caught in a rain storm, the shirt you were wearing was probably history. It would have lots of stains on it the same color as your hat....

CD in Oklahoma

or use vinegar.

Just like our grandmas did!
A word about it, wash it all out when the quilt is finished
though, because buggy little critters like it eventually.

I was able to find bluing as recently as six years ago to use in a classroom project. I bet it's still around though I haven't been looking.
I wonder if dry starch in a box is still out there? Bleah, Mom used to make me mix it up. I do worry some about the old starch recipes making fabric attractive to insects if the items are stored. Mom would also starch doilies with sugar water--if that didn't attract vermin at my house the pups would probably slurp 'em.

Boiling also helps the starch last longer because it sterilizes the water. When I make hummingbird feeder solution I boil the sugar and water for a few minutes, cool and pour into the cleaned-with-bleach feeder; it lasts for a week before it starts to mold, but if mixed with tap water it goes bad in a day.

Thanks for sharing this *recipe*. Looking forward to trying it . . . sooner than later. <GG>

mix in a spray bottle and shake to mix each time before using.

Sorry I didn't answer sooner - lost internet connection Thursday.

Thanks Glassquilt. Sounds so simple. I'm going to give it a try.

I use the bluing in my laundry on all colors. Does not change the colored clothes just makes them appear brighter.
Bluing is also great in the swiming pool makes for beautiful water and does not turn a person blue while swiming. LOL....although that would be a fun "dirty" trick to play for a pool party however it's not going to happen.

We made our own starch. We had so many clothes, we had to. No money. Mother put FLOUR in water and mixed it good, in a huge pan. Put it on the coal stove and boiled it a few minutes. We had to stay with it or it would stick. We had to put it into a sieve and strain it, then dunk a piece into the starch, and run it through the wringer. Onto the clothesline to dry, back into the house to sprinkle and roll up, then iron. Whew! We worked like crazy. We took in washings for money.

Interesting but I am not a cook. I find my starch for 99 cents at my local Walmart.

I buy Sta-Flo liquid starch at my grocery store in quarts and half gallon bottles. Then I just dilute it with water in a spray bottle. Sometimes 50/50 water/starch and sometimes just straight. Half gallon lasts a long time. It's best if you rinse the sprayer after each session of spraying (like a week or more between times) because it has a tendency to stop up. I don't like the pressurized cans of starch because they always seem to stop spraying when the can is only half empty. I've seen Sta-Flo in WalMart too.