craftgrrl | More random useful information...

Hallo! It's me again, posting to share some more random useful information that becomes an issue of note fairly often at work...

Child Safety

~ Please make sure if you have decided to paint your baby's own nursury furniture, that you pay VERY CAREFUL ATTENTION to the labels on the paint. You NEED to make sure that the paint is utterly free of lead and any other "warning label" toxin. If you have any doubts, do some research first into companies which offer paint intended for this purpose, or at least into what makes a paint "harmless"...

~ Just because the stick of glue that is fed into a hot glue gun is a glue stick does not mean that it as simple and safe for your toddler/child to use as one of the little plastic turny ones that are an elementary-school staple. They are called hot glue guns for a reason. The "gun" is not the only thing that gets hot. Molten glue is very good at burning. Even if you are not letting your child anywhere near the hot glue gun, please do not let your child get near the resultant glue or thing-recently-glued until a good number of seconds have passed, and the glue has had a chance to cool. If in doubt, wait a minute.

What IS That Item I Think I've Seen?!?

~ If you are one of the people who have seen vases of fake flowers which appear to be filled with "water" which fixes the stems in place, and are driving yourself mildly crazy trying to figure out / find the product in question...the product (at least as I've found it so far) is marketed as Liquid Acrylic. Arrange, pour, and let harden.

Picky, Picky

~ Most sewing machine needles have one flat side to the section on top that is actually inserted and clasped into the machine. This flat side must always be facing a certain direction, for the needle to properly fit into the machine and for you to be able to sew without breaking your needle and potentially even damaging the machine (nevermind what you were trying to sew). Please check your manual to see which side the flat bit of the needle needs to face. If you have never yet taken a needle out of a new machine to change it, please take a good look and make note of that direction before removing the needle completely, stopping to do something else for a while, and then checking the manual...on the off chance that the manual doesn't make note of this detail.

Tricks Of The Trade

~ Dye loves to run. It's not just a do-it-yourself problem. How many of us have drilled the soon-to-be-a-college-student on the laundry commandment of separating darks and lights? How many have allowed one careless black sock to give a load of laundry a lovely grey cast, or one pair of red underware to make everything a gruesome shade of pink? Or perhaps there was this brilliant purple sweater that is now sort of a pale blue, but everything else looks more brilliantly purple than it was before? Color "bleeding" ruins enough fabric investments that I've known people who had more sub-categories of organization in their laundry rooms than in their kitchens. And dying things yourself provides many a reminder that nothing is permanant, no matter what the lables say. In my experience, RIT dye is the ultimate for whatever you've dyed to bleed half the color onto everything else, making everything look a lot less like you wanted it to. Well there's a strange but remarkable trick I learned from my French grandmother, and I use it both on self-dyed things and newly-bought clothing of suspiscious color (the worst culprits seem to be black, red and purple).

White vinegar color-fasts dye. That's right. Plain, boring, cheap, supermarket-brand white vinegar. Take the item (if you dyed it yourself, follow through all the instructions on the box of dye(s) first, right down through drying time before first wash), and before you wash it for the first time, fill a sink/bucket/recepticle of choice with the white vinegar and enough tap water to dilute it to the not-stinking point...and let the item soak. I aim for a few hours minimum, to overnight for the really ill-reputed colors (checking and swishing around periodically). When you think enough time has passed, move said item to a differnt sink, and run fresh tapwater over it, into the plugged basin. When you can do so without tinting the water, the vinegar has colorfasted the dye. Then run the item (preferably alone, that first time) through a normal wash and dry, to clean it and remove any remaining vinegar smell.

I cannot promise you that this will always work perfectly, or never ever do something you won't like...there are a bazillion and one combinations of fabrics and fibers and dyes, after all. But every time I have done this, it has served my purpose perfectly, and with no ill effects.