Red - the colour of despair

I finished quilting my Let's Bake quilt at last on my day off, and started clipping off all the loose thread ends and carry-threads on the back.   I finished the clipping off today in the good light coming in my sewing room window, and carried the quilt triumphantly up to the bathroom to give it a good soak to remove the applique glue and quilting markings.

Modern quilters may not be familiar with that moment of panic and despair when you see a telltale blush of pink creeping out from your red fabric into the water.  I couldn't believe it as I watched all my hard work become ruined right in front of my eyes.  I've seen many claims that modern quilting cotton fabrics are all colourfast.  Being old school, I generally still pre-wash all my reds, blacks and dark purples. At the very least I cut off some corners of test fabric, wet them, and leave them to dry on top of some white scrap fabric to see if they will run.  So how this happened I do not know.  I have found what I hope is the rest of the offending fabric with my solids collection and I've thrown it out. I don't know if it was new or old fabric.

Meanwhile I ran downstairs and grabbed the Colour Catchers and started blotting and rinsing and blotting and rinsing.  Several dark pink Colour Catchers later, it seemed like the bleeding was less.  I fetched the Vanish stain remover, the bio detergent and scrubbed the stained background fabric twice, then rinsed and rinsed.  Eventually I gave up.  The red fabric continues to bleed and has dyed the backing fabric and the background fabric.  I had four pieces in the border, where the bleeding isn't as obvious on the front of the quilt. But unfortunately I used the red fabric for a spatula and for two jar lids.  I've left it all to dry then we'll have to see.  It's become worse since I took these pictures. I think I can perform surgery on the border where there isn't as much quilting: unpick the quilting, unpick the seams, pull out and replace the red fabric, then re-seam and requilt.  I can cut off the applique jar lids and spatula and make new ones in different fabric, but I don't know about the heavily quilted background fabric now dyed pink.  I guess I could try spot bleaching it. It's annoying and depressing.  I thought I was almost finished.

Also on my day off, I finished the remedial work on my little dollshouse I want to sell, and I've sent photos off to the auction house to see what they think.  My internal decoration isn't very good (done about 20 years ago and I was never happy with it or with the house I bought) and annoyingly there are a lot of yellowed glue spots inside where previously clear glue has turned yellow over time. I'm hoping the house will appeal to someone who likes antique dollshouses which tend to be similarly wonky and distressed. I think I am too much towards the true-scale realistic end of the preference spectrum when it comes to miniatures.

With the disaster quilt off the sewing table, I've worked on some more blocks for the Janet Clare Mystery BOM.  I am rather going off this mystery quilt.  There are a couple of blocks I don't like so I will have to do something else in their centres, and I don't see how such disparate blocks are going to pull together into one quilt.  I suspect they are going to be sashed like a sampler quilt which is not my favourite look.  I'll wait and see how many blocks we make and what her suggested setting is, then decide what I want to do.

My ribbon collection is all nice and tidy now and waiting to be put back in the cupboard where it lives.  I've cut several spare cards for future acquisitions.

I'm almost finished a pair of fingerless mitts I've been knitting which I don't seem to have blogged.  They were my commuter project until recently, and feature a design of Trinity stitch (like a star) on the backs of the mitts.  It took me about six re-starts to figure out the Trinity stitch, simply because I hadn't read the pattern properly and assumed I was knitting the mitt in the round like I always knit gloves and mitts.  I mean, why wouldn't you knit a glove in the round?  But no, this pattern knits the mitt flat, and if you do it flat then the directions for the Trinity stitch actually work out, go figure.  Also what I thought was a cunning new rib pattern turns out to be boring 2x2 rib when done flat.  Sigh.  Anyway, I'm seaming the mitts up now (ewww, seams inside mitts) so I've started a hat for commuter knitting using the two balls of Rowan felted tweed I got in the closing down sale a while back. For a pattern, I chose the Copy Cat Copy Cat Hat by Heathermaid.  I even got in 45 minutes of paid knitting time at work when we were all granted time to attend our trade union local AGM - I sat in the back row and knit away quite happily on the ribbing band while I listened to the speaker (who couldn't see me).  They were proudly trying out a new tech thing, where you could text in anonymous questions which then popped up on a screen behind the speaker.  Several questions were posted, eventually followed by a plaintive comment with 10 minutes to go and no sign of the speaker concluding his remarks: "Are we going to have any time left to answer these questions?" which made everyone laugh to the speaker's surprise but at least encouraged him to wrap up shortly afterwards.  All in favour of more paid knitting time at work?  Say Aye!