Roguevalley, thanks for the tip. I love percale sheets, and am glad to see that they're getting easier to find again. dbfirewife, percale is a tight weave that results in a crisp sheet. Stays crisp even after laundering. I recently bought a set for my new bed at Tuesday Morning. Package said the set was originally $360 (king size), and after a few markdowns I got them for $80. I absolutely love these sheets. I need another set and have been looking at SmartBargains.com. I'm getting bit confused however. Did see a set of Barbara Barry 400 tc percale for $99 (plus I have a 10% off coupon). Supposedly they originally retail for over $350. But then I saw more percale with higher thread counts for less money! I guess you need to be able to actually touch the sheets in person to know what you're getting.

I agree with beverly. Many of us are trying, but this forum is a shadow of its old self. The old posts cropping up make it more time consuming to scroll through and filter through the old and new. One of the reasons the old site worked so well is that you could check it instantly without investing a lot of time and effort; besides, it was always fun to see the new posts; and just about anything that was newly listed was, in fact, really new. I think the bigger issue is the change in how photos are now in the control of houzz once they are posted. Really a shame, as the photos are what make the forum lively and fresh. Understandably, many now are reluctant to share a glimpse into their own homes if they don't know what will happen to the image eventually. I hope the new site will listen.....the forum will only be as good as the members who contribute.

By the way....a few old-time tips on ironing cotton, including sheets. It is much harder to get good results if the sheet (or other item) has been dried and you rewet it with a mister or use steam. It is best for the item to be uniformly and slightly damp, and then you don't need or want a mister or steam. If your washer spins fast enough to remove most of the water (as most front-loaders now do) you can iron directly from the washer. In the old days washers had a mangle (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine) which would press the excess water out before ironing...eventually some mangles were even heated. If you mist you just won't get the fabric evenly wet enough to iron it easily or well, and a steam setting takes much longer and results are not as good. The old timey way, if not ironed directly from washing, was to wet the fabric before ironing by "sprinkling" with water, which added a lot more water than a mister. Search for "vintage cork sprinkler" on ebay and you'll see what was used! I remember that when my mother didn't have time to iron immediately after washing she would roll up the items while damp and place in the freezer in a plastic bag. When she had time to iron, the items would thaw pretty quickly, and they were uniformly wet. When cotton is uniformly wet, you do want to use the highest setting on the iron, which is usually for cotton and linen. But keep the iron moving of course! And of course a bit of MamaPinky's starch will give an ultra smooth finish!

Roc, if you want to find out if your sheets have synthetic fibers, take a clipping of the fabric in some discrete location, and burn it with a match and sniff. If there are synthetic fibers in there you will smell it. If its cotton it will smell too, like burnt cotton. I too love the old sheets. I just bought some, never washed, sheets off ebay several weeks ago. 2 of the sheets were muslin I believe but advertised as percale. There are 3 densities of sheeting weavings that I've seen referred to. The lowest density is muslin, that I believe is around 130 threads/sqin. I've seen reference to an intermediate thread count. The the highest is percale. I believe these differences are only in the number of threads per inch. The type of cotton fiber influences the quality of the fabric. There is Pima cotton which is a long staple fiber. I've read somewhere that Pima cotton is a sort of "brand" of cotton plant, that was developed in the early part of the 1900's, and named after the Pima indians, who were the primary growers in the SW US at that time. Here is a lot of info on cottonhttp://www.cottoninc.com/fiber/quality/ Here is the label of the old "new" sheets that are percale. They are lovely washed up. The packaging was intact and made of cellophane instead of plastic. I love the description on the back. I think "Pencale" is just a JC Penney's trade name. The yellowing in the photo is a shadow of some sort, they were white. These pics were taken out of the cellophane package.