How Hot?

Like many others, I prefer stitching full coverage pieces on pre-gridded fabric. I am not so naive as to believe that I can keep track of stitches at any significant distance. Counting errors happen. Since I prefer stitching along the diagonal (10 wide or 20 wide) and park threads to be used later it means that having to count where to park a thread is a common occurrence.

I finished one of the Spangler StoryKeeps in Dec 2019. Since then it has languished in the “I need to finish this” pile. Farewell to Anger was my next full coverage piece and was completed in June 2020. See earlier in this particular paragraph re:nothing further done.

So today was the day. After meeting Dani & Alex for breakfast, I stopped at one of the hardware stores and purchased a couple of silicone tubs. We don’t have a tub, I don’t trust leaving anything in a sink, who knows the past history of any buckets. My friend Jill had warned me that you need hot water to dissolve those grid lines.  Tubs in the shower – check. Add water – check. Obviously, for safety reasons, we have a reasonable heat limit on our water heater.  I attempted to work with as hot as I could get from the water heater.

after 10 or so minutes with no change – I filled the electric kettle. Once boiling, I pulled out the smaller piece, added the hot water and dunked it back in. It worked! So I pulled it out to hand up, and added that water to the bigger tub. No change so repeated the drill with the kettle.

So step one has been accomplished! The lines are gone! Hopefully they will stay gone once the pieces dry…