Spring Cleaning

While I need to get to cutting out the lining for the March pants, my glaringly stained blocking board stared at me, no matter where I was in the cave. I decided to clean it some how. I wasn't sure if the whole thing would just fall apart once it got wet and I tried not to super soak it. In the end it did get totally wet.

I used this blocking board constantly. It is used to block smocking, to make sure collars halves are exactly alike, and just general quick ironing. It seems to get used several times a day, most days. You've seen it in my posts. It is grossly stained, seems water stained, at this point and I figured before I laid out 30-40 bucks for a new June Tailor Pressing Board one I might as well clean it.

First thing I did was cut (gasp), a hole in the back of the board, just  a nip to see what it was actually made of. It appeared to be chipboard covered with a thin "bag" of plastic, like a ziploc. The top is densely padded. I saw the innards and decided it was a go. I wasn't going to soak this thing as I was not sure it would ever completely dry, at least before next Christmas! I sprayed it down with Oxy Clean and started scrubbing. Meh, not so great. But when I walked away for a few minutes it seemed the Oxy just needed time to get going. I got it as good as I could without a soak. I then took it to the sink and placed it soap side down and sprayed the Oxy off. It was not soaked. Then it was on to some Dawn. Dawn never hurts, right? That's the stage you see above, scrub and scrub. This seemed to really be doing the trick. Once I got the Dawn phase over with it was back to the sink sprayer to remove the foam. I pushed out all the water I could just pressing my hands and rubbing down on it. I guess you could say at this point it was now soaked. Now for phase three. I mixed some water and bleach and rubbed it all down with a paper towel soaked in that mixture.  I let it sit a while then did another clean water rinse to get the bleach out.

OK, I now have a soaked board and it is feeling slightly limp in a spot. I put down two layers of a big fluffy towel on the floor, put the board face down on the towel, topped with another towel, and started walking on it to squeeze out the moisture. It worked. I needed to do this a couple of time to really get it all out. It was still moist but not soaked now. I let it sit overnight. Wow, did it look better in the morning! It still had a bit of pale stain in one area so I did another bleach treatment and it is drying now. It will hopefully be back in usable condition within 24 hours. I'll post pics when done. It was so gross before and I was always afraid the stains, albeit water stains, would somehow telegraph to the work. Now I can relax, I hope.

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A few thing on the home front are catching my attention this morning but after that it will be to the cave to get going on the March pants. These will be "flat lined",  a favorite technique that I have used off and on since it was first in Threads in 1992. It looks like our weather will be turning horrid again tomorrow so I see lots of time to work on the March project. Till then....Bunny