Bleeding Colour

 Here's a little sampler square of the crazy log cabin quilt. I tried out quilting different distances from the seams of the patches. Contrary to my expectations, it only took about an hour to do the one square, so looking ahead to sixteen hours for the whole piece isn't too daunting. But, horror of horrors, the dark brown linen bled like crazy when I washed it. It doesn't show too badly against the darker coloured patches, but the pale yellow cotton just seemed to soak it up. I tried spot treating it with Retayne, which helped a bit, but not completely.
Might you have any hints for me, dear readers? Other than pre-washing ALL fabrics before piecing?  I'm thinking of  giving the whole thing a treatment with Retayne, but that is a product I haven't used too often, so have no idea how it will do with fabric that has already been sewn. I guess this is one of the dangers of using thrift store materials - the pants this linen came from weren't new, but probably had only been dry cleaned before.

Comments

  1. Live with it and watch the evolution?

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  2. there are dye magnet products on the market. large markets might have them, sunlight or tide product. my spinning teacher uses them, I will ask for the product name and get back to you.

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  3. I've had some success with simmering gently in water with Synthrapol (about 1/2 tsp per gallon). It helps with washing out fibre-reactive dyes without allowing the dye molecules to re-establish themselves. It doesn't always work depending on how "married" to the fibre the stain is though.

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