Sewing tip–removing blood spots

Here’s a quick tip to get us going.

How annoying is it when you are sewing a beautiful piece of fabric only to prick your finger with the needle and get blood on your creation. We all know how difficult it is to get blood out of fabrics.

Here’s a quick tip to remove the blood mark but don’t forget, it only works with YOUR blood and only with fresh blood.

I know it sounds ghastly and I’m sorry there are no pictures, I’m afraid that I can’t bring myself to actually bleed for my art.

So here goes.

If there is a lot of blood, dab it quickly with a clean piece of tissue to soak up as much as possible.

Thread a needle with a similar colour to your fabric, double it up but DON’T put a knot in the end.   Never use red thread for something like this as the red fibres often get intertwined in your fabric fibres and you can’t get them out (same goes for tacking – so this is now two tips in one).

Now run the thread through your mouth, getting plenty of saliva on the thread. Obviously don’t do this if you’ve just had a cup of coffee or a bar of chocolate (of glass of red wine – hic) – you don’t want any colour residue on your saliva.

Pass the needle through the blood spot and pull the thread all the way through.  Do this several times, in fact as many times as needed until the colour fades.  The enzymes in your saliva will dissolve the blood and you will remove all the red colouring.  Now if the fabric can take it, dampen a clean piece of cotton with water and gently dab at the spot.  Allow to dry and hopefully you won’t see any mark.

Remember this only works with YOUR blood. 

I used to make and alter wedding dresses and I used this technique many times – glad the brides didn’t know!!!!!!