The beautiful antique linen sheets are similar weight to fine Egyptian cotton sheets. I have a linen duvet similar to a tablecloth or kitchen towel weight. It gets softer and softer. Good linen sheets will last at least 100 years with care.

Kitty, thanks. I have been making handkerchiefs from handkerchief weight linen (very light weight but not gauzy). I have made a couple of bath sheets and hand towels from what I'm pretty is fairly heavy but not canvas weight linen. And I wouldn't want sheets made from either weights. I have a table cloth and napkins, inherited, and am pretty sure they are at least 70 yrs. old. But my non-terry kitchen towels are so thin they have become rags (am pretty sure they aren't linen). The table cloth is on the shiny side. I'll need to do some more research but is this a quality of the linen needed for sheets?

I have an old sheet in my collection that I am hanging on to simply because it feels so darned good. It is ancient. It is all cotton and it is the kind that used to feel so good when I was a kid and tucked into bed after a long hot summer day. Laying there on that cotton sheet that was dried in the hot sun and having that whirring little fan going on me through the hot summer night is one of my fondest memories.

That soft cotton sheet brings back all of those memories and still feels so good. There is none like it. Micro fiber just does not have that same feel. It is just a plain woven, not even satin weave. Just plain good feeling, breathable cotton. Ahhhh!!

Gertiedaub, that's the same exact feeling I get whenever the sheets are dried outside. That brings out so many good emotions. I did a bit of research on microfiber sheets and someone reviewed them as horrible; they even pull the hairs on your skin. I think I'll be going with the cotton percale. The top sheets (didn't get that right in my original post; had only made two top sheets because I had measured wrong, even had to add material on the end of one so it fit!) definitely have that "ahhhh" factor.