Yesterday I received a sad and heartfelt email from an embroiderer. I could feel her pain as I read her email:
I just completed a small embroidery and the red thread bled. Oh dear. I was looking on the net for advice and came across your blog entry about testing a red thread. My question is what would you do if it had bled. Some people take the preventative approach and rinse all of their threads before using, some add salt, vinegar – loads of conflicting advice. Also when I wash my embroidery afterwards to get the soluble pen out is there a way of washing it that further avoids the chances of susceptible threads bleeding?
My commiserations for a dreadful day. How annoying and disappointing for you!
My first suggestion would be to only use colourfast threads. If you’re wanting to use overdyed threads, some of them are colourfast, I do believe – you may just have to search for them!
My other suggestion is to not use water soluble pens if you think it is at all likely that the colours will bleed when you do wash. Use some other method of drawing on the fabric or tracing your pattern – even water soluble pencils are better than pens, as they can sometimes be rubbed off with the eraser. Personally, I try not to use water soluble pens at all.
BUT, if your threads have already run… I am not sure. I feel at a bit of a loss to know how to help as anything I suggest may not help at all, or may indeed make it worse! In dressmaking, if I think a fabric is overly dyed, when I prewash it, I use salt and cold water only to help keep the dye in place. But if you do that with your embroidered piece you risk setting the run bits too. What would happen if you ran and ran and ran cold water over the piece? It might wash out the dyes, but then they may just “lodge” in the fabric. On the other hand, the run parts might wash out too… It is very hard to know.
My only experience of having a thread run disappointingly was with the piece that is on the front cover of my book “Ukrainian Drawn Thread Embroidery”. I cheated and used Photoshop to edit out the small patch where the iron had spurted on the black (non-colourfast, as it turned out!) thread. I just didn’t want to make it worse by trying anything else! Of course, this only fixed the picture of the embroidery, not the embroidery itself.
Does anyone have any suggestions for this awful predicament? Has this happened to you in the past, and what did you do about it?
Most of the embroidery that I do is white on white, so the dye in threads running is not something I often encounter.
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
A comment sent directly to me by Carole:
“This is the bane of all stitchers. The only thing I know to do is just to run cold water through it until the guilty thread stops bleeding. This should also remove the stray dye from the fabric. This is the method suggested by The Embroiderers Guild [The USA guild, that is – Yvette].
My best advice is to avoid the problem from the start. If you even think that you might have to launder your embroidery, pretreat the threads in advance. I don’t use the salt or vinegar, but a product suggested by a quilter friend. I use a product called Retayne that I bought at a quilt store. There are other brands also. I tested it first on a sample of an old Needle Necessities scarlet. (almost guaranteed to bleed) and it worked like a charm.”
I’m not sure if we have products such as Retayne here in Australia; often we don’t have the same products as in the US. However, it might be worth looking for something similar, if they exist here!
Here in South Africa Dylon makes product that remove colour when you have washed colours that have run in the laundry. i have not tried it, maybe this would work.
Thanks Odette. Yes, I think we have that here too. I’ve not tried it either, but it could be worth keeping in mind.
As far as I know rinsing is your only option. I did some blackwork using caron wildflowers threads and the red/orange bled. I just soaked and rinsed (cold water!) everyday until it was finally gone, it took a long time but the rest of the piece looks fine.
Hi Yvette, thanks everyone for the suggestions. I rinsed the offending bleeds over and over in cold water and rubbed the bleeds with ice cubes, it took a while (2 days)but it worked enough to be detectable only to me. Then i rinsed the rest out with a low strength oxybleach, it faded the red yarn a little bit to a watermelon colour but didn’t affect the other yarns that were actually colourfast.
I will be testing all yarns before use in future and with a quick online search i have found a retailer of Retayne in South Australia.
Thanks again,
Brenda
We have a product in WA Called Colour Catcher. It comes in a small red box 11 x 13 cms. The brand is Punch and has 15 sheets which look like pieces of heavy vylene. I have had a shirt stained by something red and soaked it in clean water and detergent with one of these sheets. Had to do the shirt for a few hours but it worked. Now if I have to wash any embroidery I always put a sheet in with the lux or whatever I am washing it with. Very handy product.
All these wonderful tips! Thanks!