Seeing red. Seeing spots. Seeing red spots!

I just took on a job for a friend (the Lead in my quartet) who's nurturing a new business: Downsize My Home. She asked me to create some work aprons with her logo embroidered on the front. Of the 11 aprons that can be cut from the endbolt of muslin she purchased, I embroidered 6 today.

I was thrilled with the first one off the machine and ironed it carefully, easing the fullness of the stabilizer onto the fabric once I took it off the hoop. For a final flourish, I gave it a good steam burst to really give the adhesive an extra boost.

Sonuvabitch.

This iron has been doing heavy-duty duty (snicker--she said "doody doody") for the past couple of weeks while I made 16 (SIXTEEN!) of these bags (linking to what I found to be the best of many tutorials):

Every bag was embroidered with the name of its new owner. Note the fun bi-colored zipper!

Using up the trimming from the 100' roll of mesh I bought for the cabana bags. Liner and outer shell have this as the bottom.

The bags are heavily lined with stabilizer, and I went through several cups of water while I steamed yards of the stuff onto yards of fabrics. It's not as though the water's been sitting there for months with nothing to do but rust the innards of the iron!

Yet rust it did, and I didn't take the precaution of 'bursting' onto a rag or the end of the ironing board. I could just kick myself. If a light bleach solution doesn't solve this, then I'll give it to my friend with apologies and explain it was the prototype. Luckily, she contracted me to only make 10 aprons, so this is technically an extra. Still, I was hoping I could give her a little more for the money she's spending.

Update: She's thrilled! She grabbed the spotty one for her own, and even paid me more than the agreed-upon price for the bundle o' aprons. The bleach basically turned the unbleached muslin into bleached muslin wherever I applied it, and did nothing to fade those damn spots. Out! Out!! (Channeling Lady M.)