Before we go any further, no hummingbirds were injured for this post! 😗 I’m referring to the embroidered hummingbird I showed you in my very first post. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get rid of the blue that bled from the thread I used in the stitching. You can see in the original photo how the blue had spread around the stitching. I tried to remove some of it with bleach and a cotton bud but that actually took a little of the colour from the stitching and made the white fabric a bit yellow. Next, I decided to tea-dye the fabric so that the yellowed sections weren’t obvious. That just meant it was wet again, giving more bleeding and not hiding the yellowed sections. That’s when I decided to start from scratch.
I decided against thread painting another hummingbird because I didn’t want to have the bleeding issue again. I had used Gutermann 30 variegated yarn which looked great and I don’t have any other yarn at 30wt. I had tried some stitching with my King Tut 40wt but it didn’t look as good. I think it still would have worked with that or some other yarns that I have but, in the end, I went with raw edge applique.
I used the same template but because I traced it onto Heat&Bond, I ended up with a reversed picture. That did not matter at all. It was so much easier than tracing and stitch painting and it’s not a bad result. I have yet to put the border around it but I think this was a better option. The border won’t take long for me to do tomorrow.
This hummingbird is part of a Paper Bag Quilt with my craft friends. As part of this, I’ve done another block to go with it. Another friend had included some hummingbird fabric in the paper bag and I added a half-square triangle border around it in matching colours.
I used a couple of methods to make the half-square triangles but in the end, this was the best option. I needed seven of the large ones and nine of the smaller ones. This method makes multiples of 8 so I doubled it to get 16 of the smaller ones. To do this, you need two squares of fabric and put them right sides together. A couple of times I had one fabric the wrong way which was so very annoying! On the light fabric, you draw a cross through the middle then add a diagonal joining each line on the outside. You stitch a quarter inch on either side of the diagonals and then cut on the diagonal lines and the cross lines to get 8. To get the 16, you just double the length of one side of the fabrics and draw two sets of lines. Easy peasy!
We had a lot of rain last night which continued into the morning but the sun came out this afternoon. It’s unseasonably cold at the moment but it was really nice to get a walk in. I think the sun is going to stay around for tomorrow. 🤞
Thanks for joining me for today’s post and hope to see you again tomorrow. 😊
My Creative Obsessions 
2 responses to “Blogtober #9 – Bleeding Hummingbirds!”
The blue bleed almost has a watercolour feel to it! I wonder if taking more paint to the background is a way to rescue the block?
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Hmm, that could have been an option before tea dyeing. Just looks messy now. But it’s worth a try because it can’t get any worse!
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