Fall Frolic Blocks That Needed Fixing
These blocks were damaged in my quilt due to my own stupidity. I had decided to break in my new sewing machine and do a LOT of quilting on it. Unfortunately, I had different weight threads in top and bottom and had lots of light thread showing on my dark blue backing... I got my trusty fabric markers and began colouring them in. When these died (I DID say there was lots to cover!), I used other permanent pens - and one of these leaked through the batting to the front. I was (am) devastated. 5 blocks in total had visible ink stains on them.
I tried bleach (this actually damaged part of one piece of sashing - had to fix that too!), carpet stain remover, hair spray (thanks to a Google search and BOY did the dye run with that!), Napisan, oxy-action type cleansers, liquid stain removers, carpet stain removers... in the end I gave up. It could have been a lot worse, I know. Many people online told me not to worry about it, that they had trouble finding the stains, but I knew they were there and my eyes went straight to those spots.
For anyone who gets in this mess, check the website of the pen you used - this one had a link to stain removal right on the homepage! (By the way, it said to use dry cleaning solvent (illegal to buy/sell over the counter here in Australia) or go straight to the dry cleaners. Had I done that, they most likely would have fixed the problem for me)
I decided to fix 3 based on advice I received from the seamstress who works at my local dry cleaner's. The damage wasn't as bad as I thought it was (my MIL didn't notice it at all), but my eyes kept focussing on it, so something had to be done. My apologies to those that made the blocks in the first place.
First block to be operated on was J12:
And the treatment for E10:
And finally block C12 (this one took the longest - I appliquéd every light square on individually!):
