Thursday, August 28, 2008

Great American Smoke Out!

Larry helped me work with the fabric that Christine gave us this past weekend to try to remove the smoky aroma before I let it into the house. Here's what we did that worked pretty well. There was hardly any breeze on Sunday, so we set up a cardtable and a sawhorse outside with a sheet of cardboard on top to make a large flat surface. We layered the fabric on the cardboard and when a single layer was down I doused it liberally with Febreeze. Then we put down another layer on top of the previous one and doused that one. Larry said it was like making lasagna! Lol I think we had ten layers total and I used most of a full bottle of Febreeze. We took an old plastic (and very dirty) mesh fluorescent light fixture rectangular insert and laid it on top of the whole assembly. It let in air, but kept the fabric from flying off. We left it all out there in the sun for a few hours, then I took off the top two denim rows and let the rest breathe for another couple hours.
I'd like to say that it smells perfectly fresh now, but that would be a lie. I'd say it's at least 80-90% better and smells much more like Fabreeze than it does smoke. I no longer feel like I'll be getting nicotine poisening through my fingers from it anyway. I organized the fabric by colors and themes etc and placed the little stacks in a laundry basket. I put the basket right next to the Ionic Breeze air machine in our bedroom in case it was still exuding that smell. I did a sniff test a few days later and I think it has improved even more. That Fabreeze is wondeful stuff! It would probably air out even better if you didn't do layers, but I wanted to finish during this lifetime.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for your nice long comment. A good hobby is a nice healthy escape from the daily grind, such as your quilting. As far as comparing to siblings, my sister was so smart they moved her up into my grade and into my very class!