My brother regretfully used my favorite tea towels to mop up the leak that spouted from the under the kitchen sink due to a broken gasket. Years of rust or grime or whatever else may have been under the duct tape-- which the previous owners must have jerry-rigged-- got all over my WHITE tea towels and stained them! Argh!
Well, the obvious fix would be to soak them in some bleach until the stains come out, right? There is just one problem with that. One of the reasons why I love these tea towels is because they were hand-detailed with a novel little square of very colorful fabric-- and we all know that bleach is the enemy of color.
So, I put my genius cap on and actually found a way to bleach the white part without damaging the colored part or having to hold the colored part out of the bleach!
You will need:
A basin of COLD water
1/4 cup of bleach
Dawn dish soap or other dish de-greaser soap
Crisco or other shortening ( butter-flavored is not required, that is just all I had on hand)
Okay, so here is the stained tea towel that normal stain-fighting agents refused to remove.
Take the shortening and liberally cover all the colored places. Rub it in and then coat again.
Turn the item over and do the other side.You don't want the bleach to soak in through the back and bleach out your color from the backside.
Fill basin with water and add bleach. Carefully submerge the entire item and let set for as long as it takes. Do NOT move the item about of swish it around. You risk removing the shortening that is protecting your color. It took about six hours of soaking for my tea towels.
Remove the item and rinse with cold water. Using dawn dish soap wash off the shortening. Wring out water and air dry.
Here are my tea towels after bleaching for 6 hours! Beautiful and just as colorful.
Okay, so here is my tea towel
Well, the obvious fix would be to soak them in some bleach until the stains come out, right? There is just one problem with that. One of the reasons why I love these tea towels is because they were hand-detailed with a novel little square of very colorful fabric-- and we all know that bleach is the enemy of color.
So, I put my genius cap on and actually found a way to bleach the white part without damaging the colored part or having to hold the colored part out of the bleach!
You will need:
A basin of COLD water
1/4 cup of bleach
Dawn dish soap or other dish de-greaser soap
Crisco or other shortening ( butter-flavored is not required, that is just all I had on hand)
Okay, so here is the stained tea towel that normal stain-fighting agents refused to remove.
Take the shortening and liberally cover all the colored places. Rub it in and then coat again.
Turn the item over and do the other side.You don't want the bleach to soak in through the back and bleach out your color from the backside.
Fill basin with water and add bleach. Carefully submerge the entire item and let set for as long as it takes. Do NOT move the item about of swish it around. You risk removing the shortening that is protecting your color. It took about six hours of soaking for my tea towels.
Remove the item and rinse with cold water. Using dawn dish soap wash off the shortening. Wring out water and air dry.
Okay, so here is my tea towel
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