Bleeping bleeding thread!

Hello, everyone.

I've started a project that involves white ground fabric and red embroidery. I did some testing for stitches.

As y'all can see, I looked at which stitch to use. Whether to use the embroidery hoop. And whether my favorite stabilizer, Sulky Solvy, would be a good idea. The stitched samples were all ironed with a bit of water. What I completely forgot to do was to test the threads. Oh, how I wish I had done that!

I was humming right along, hemming and embroidering. Then I rinsed the first pieces to get the remnants of the Sulky Solvy out.

 Even this one, though not as bad as the others, has pink smears around the cross.

Ouch. A lot of work down the drain, which wouldn't have happened if I'd just checked the threads first. (There is a sizeable embroidery thread stash around here. Some came as anonymous hunks from Ebay. I think the sellers were unloading some cheap stuff they didn't want!) Moral of the story: don't be in a huge rush to start!

I tossed all the anonymous red thread hanks and bits that I could see. Dug around in the cupboard and found some still-in-the-sleeves DMC red thread. (By thread here I mean 6 stranded embroidery floss.) And then *water tested* the DMC thread. The lukewarm water in the dish stayed clear. I put the thread on a paper napkin to dry. When I returned, the napkin was still in the original color.

Tomorrow the project can get back on the rails again.

And the DMC thread hank is now being stored in a little plastic bag with its label sleeves, so it doesn't become an anonymous pile of red thread.