Arabesque Near Disaster

I am always wary of red fabrics, and with good reason: they have run on me more than once and nearly ruined a quilt. Yet I do not learn, and rarely think to prewash them. This latest near disaster has taught me to prewash them without fail, and so to that end, I have pulled the yardage off my shelf and done just that. Prior to this incident, I had washed all my red scraps when two quilts I'd made with scraps had run so I figured I was okay for this SAHRR quilt. I must say it is intriguing how certain light-coloured fabrics pick up the dye, while others do not. Here is what happened with Arabesque.

This was before the quilt had been washed. I admit I was a little concerned by the deep burgundy used in the on-point frame, some of the star points and the maple leaves in the four corners. It was yardage, an older fabric I'd had for some time, called Nana's by The Balson Hercules Group. I was fairly confident of the other burgundies because I was relatively sure I had pre-washed them all after seeing them run in the 94 Quilt and one or two of my scrap quilts.

I washed two quilts together, a pink, green, silver on black Stack and Whack that had been on our bed in February and Arabesque. I put in a colour catcher and set the machine for light wash in tap cold which means there is no water at all coming from the hot tap, and TruEarth detergent.

When I pulled them out, I was shocked to see the colour catcher: eggplant. Oh no... and yes, I could see that especially in some areas, (for one, the first round of snowball blocks: those along the sides, not those in the corners), the distinction between the pink and the cream background was non-existent. However, the pretty trailing floral vines fabric was perfect. The final round has two strips of fabric, a soft pink and a cream. There are two cream fabrics here because I didn't have enough of either. One of the creams was perfect; the other was... not. See what I mean about it being intriguing (read weird) how some fabrics pick up a dye that has run while others do not? Well, I figured all was lost; it was all my fault, and I was super-upset, furious with myself, embarrassed, dejected at all the work and thought that had gone into this, how much I ended up loving it, and now, it was one sad quilt. 

I actually popped it into the dryer for ten minutes on air to fluff it before laying it flat to air dry. I do this with all my quilts. We don't have any carpet in our house so I don't want the quilts to be too wet when I spread them out on the wood floors. The washer does get them pretty wrung out; it's a front loading one and on this setting it spins on high.

I quietly nursed my dejected self and sad quilt for a few days, and then decided to see if good old Vicki Welsh's 'Save My Bleeding Quilt' technique would work. In retrospect, I wish I had taken a before photo of the quilt, but I was so upset I did not want a record of it. You can find her blog here with a link to that PDF article. Vicki hand dyes fabrics and sells them, so she has expertise in this area!

Before I soaked the quilt though, I pulled the small chunks of scraps (less than ¼ yard) left over from the quilt and dumped them in the kitchen sink with the hottest water from our hot water heater. Yes, some of them ran but not too badly. And then I soaked the Nana's yardage. I was shocked to see the water.

So I was really really worried about soaking my quilt, knowing that the Nana's yardage was so unstable. However, I had faith that the Blue Dawn and hot water would work to lift out the dye; it had done before...

 

First soaking in the sink. I was horrified to see the water! Yet I knew this was good: the dye was IN the water, so it was lifting out of the quilt.

One side of our kitchen double-sink is extra deep, (when we renovated our one bathroom, we put in a shower, taking out the tub) so the quilt did fit, and was completely submersed. This is extremely important, as otherwise where the quilt sits at and above the waterline, the dye can soak in there and leave a line. I weighted it down with containers filled with water to keep it entirely submerged. I drained the sink, squeezed out the quilt, rinsed it just a little bit as best I could (it's 52" square), and then repeated the hottest water possible and Blue Dawn. As Vicki says, you don't always need to add more soap because the quilt is full of it, and I found that to be true, but I did add a bit in subsequent soaks. I soaked it the second time for 12 hours, first time was four to six, can't quite recall.

Well, here is Bella modelling the quilt! I wanted to get some sun on it so you can see the lovely crinkly texture.

Blue Dawn is magic. Here are a couple of closeups of the worst-affected areas, now pristine. Notice the cream fabrics, how clear they all are. After the first wash, the cream fabric along the lower edge of the quilt in this photo was as pink as the light pink above it. Yet the cream fabric, same exact tone, just different company, on the side edge of the quilt was as you see here, was unaffected!

 The gold cats fabric you can just see on the left side by the star points and the beautiful floral vine fabric were also unaffected. However, the light blue mottled fabric was mottled with pink, not cream as you see here. Devastating indeed.

Below is a photo of the quilt centre. The gold cats on cream? Perfect. Not so the lighter pink snowball blocks along the four sides of the original centre block; they were almost indistinguishable from the cream background triangles. The cream background for the medium rose snowball blocks were just fine, but that was the cat fabric. Neither fabric had been pre-washed. As you can see, the dye lifted right out.

Here is my crinkly soft quilt, all happy now with a relieved maker (hmm, haven't taken a photo with me in it, must rectify that). I am thinking I may appliqué leaf stems for the leaves to reinforce that they are leaves, though crowns are fine too.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for the cutting instructions for Glowing Hearts! The pattern will be available tomorrow too, on sale, with three different quilts, two sizes, within it.