Im always saddened to read the posts from quilters who have worked for weeks or months on a quilt only to have a fabric bleed on it when they wash it the first time. Such stories definitely strengthen my personal opinion that all fabrics should be prewashed. In one recent discussion on this, many suggestions were given but one comment that caught my attention stated that Color Catchers are worthless and I wanted to address that because I dont believe its true at all. Color Catchers arent worthless, but they also arent a miracle solution. They have to be understood. For one thing, they dont pull excess dye from a fabric--for that you want Synthropol--nor do they stabilize loose dyes in fabrics--Retayne is made for that. Color Catchers **only lock up dye that bleeds into the wash water so it cant deposit on another fabric**. Let me repeat that: They only catch the dye that has bleed into the wash water. My experience is that a serious bleeder cannot be stopped by a wash or two with a Color Catcher. However, you can save a quilt thats got a bleeding fabric in it with time, lots of soaking, and a box of Color Catchers--Ive done it. The method I used on a quilt with a bleeding rust-colored fabric was to wash the quilt repeatedly with Color Catchers. Id initially washed the quilt for a friend with a couple of CCs and laid it flat to dry. About an hour later, I walked past the quilt and noticed that the rust dye was wicking into the white fabrics. Back in the tub with more Color Catchers it went. I repeated this process **10 times!!** before the excess dye was completely removed and would no longer wick into the white fabrics. The CCs prevented the dye that was coming off the rust fabrics from redepositing on the whites, but they did not prevent the excess dyes from wicking; they arent made to do that. The only thing that stopped the wicking was the repeated washing to remove the excess dye. For this reason I dont bother to use them when I prewash fabrics in my sink as its a waste of the product. I wash in hot water and detergent, then run the water out of the sink, and run new hot water in and repeat that process until no more color shows in the water. I have a white sink, but when I used a stainless sink, Id dip a white mug or clear glass into the water and check it that way. And just for illustration, the following photo is a high-quality quilt shop black (not a batik) that I washed several years ago. For kicks I decided to do a test wash in cold, just to see what would happen. Id been told by the shop owners in my area that washing in cold is all one needs to do to prevent bleeding. Im not convinced---are you?
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 13:01:51 +0000
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