The Drama

I have showed pictures of my quilt, Cherry Chocolate a couple of weeks ago - what I didn’t mention was the dramas I had with this quilt.

After many long days I had finally finished the quilt, and I was happy with how it looked although it was still covered with blue water erasable pen.  I now needed to wash and block it.  I had pre-washed all the fabrics, so it never crossed my mind there would be a problem. So I happily popped the quilt into the washing machine and went and watched TV.

When I pulled the quilt from the machine, and laid it out on the lounge room floor I was horrified to discover several places on the quilt where one of the red fabrics had run.

Picture the scene - I am sitting on the floor, looking at my stained quilt starting to cry, and my husband (fiancé at the time), like a typical male goes into Mr. Fix-it mode.  What I really needed was a hug, but he said “we have to get the marks out, and we have to do something right now”.  So he jumped on the internet to see what suggestions he could find, and I was still sitting on the floor all alone, feeling totally devastated.

A short while later, Paul came back with some suggestions, but the only thing I remembered him saying was “if the quilt is ruined, then you can’t make it any worse, so you might as well try something to fix it”.  But in my distressed state, I just heard “the quilt is ruined”, and poor Paul got his head bitten off.  (By the way, he read that somewhere on the internet, and it is actually good advice, but just not what I needed to hear at the time).

To cut a long story short, we managed to significantly lighten the stain to the point where it was almost undetectable by repeatedly applying a lipstick removing product which came in a stick application, then gently rubbing the stain with an old toothbrush, and then rinsing. 

Oh, and I really do appreciate the help I got from Paul that night, even if it might not have seemed like it at the time.