More on bleeding fabric

Eureka - my tumbler quilt did not bleed during it's bath, so I will be finishing that this month. I have had bleeding fabric woes with my quilts since I washed them over the holidays. read about it here. I have been experimenting. I washed my purple scrap drawer with obvious tangled results. But now they won't bleed right?

There has been a division among quilters for years about prewashing fabric. I was joyfully on the side of not prewashing. I had high hopes that I could be a fabric aquirer and not have to stop and prewash and iron.I have dyed my own fabric, and I took all the precautions.  But I can't tell you how hard it was to pull my finished quilts out of the washer to see the fabric bleeds on my finished and loved quilts.
 This was the first disaster a few years ago - a braid quilt from my first Bonnie Hunter class

I used color catchers but I vowed to wash all the reds I used. The latest one bled from the backing to the front with color catchers.

After my last post, there was a comment ( oh thank you thank you) about this great article about washing quilts ( and fabric)

I read it several times. She says color catchers are not the answer, It is the detergent. and the amount of time it soaks and releases the color. The trick is to keep the color suspended above or away from the quilt.

Save My Bleeding Quilt

If you never read another word on my website please read this post. I've done a LOT of testing on fabric bleeding and I want everyone to know my results. If you find the information valuable please share the link to this post.

so I took fairly new unwashed dark fabrics, mostly navy, and I used Dawn detergent and soaked and soaked
2 hours later

4 hours later

and I missed the photo of 8 hours later, but it was really really dark. Someone closed the lid to the washer and it finished the cycle. LOL
I am more optimistic about my chances for my quilts to survive. I am still not sure I want to prewash everything.

I am linking to:
Fiber Tuesday
Fabric Tuesday

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