Fabric Galore

I had a friend in my sewing guild who owned a fabric store. She always said to soak the fabric in cold water and a small box of baking soda over night and then run it through the regular wash cycle. I have never had a problem with this method. I have had fabrics bleed and I used the above method and the bleeding disappeared. You must do this before you put it into the dryer.

Innova18

Retayne is used to set the color. I use a lot of red and navy fabrics in my quilting so I set the colors on all my fabrics except precuts. I soak my fabrics in a small plastic utility tub in hot water as directed on the bottle. During the soak, I agitate the fabric several times. After the soak time, I rinse the fabric a couple of times until the water runs clear. I then put the fabric in my front loader and run it through the rinse cycle. I prefer doing the initial soak by hand so I can actually see what is happening with the fabric. It is surprising to see the excess color that comes out of the fabric during the soaking. This method also preshrinks the fabric.

I have used (am currently using) Retayne that is 1-2 years old. It takes a while to use a bottle since you use such a small amount to treat your fabric. I haven't had any problems.

On precuts, I do the white paper towel test to determine if they are going to bleed.

bearisgray

Why not treat the pre-cuts, also?

It seems to me that a small piece of fabric would have the same characteristics as the larger piece that it was cut from.

Ikesgram

I have always washed everything because of allergies to other fabrics in one of my four children. BUT.. then I made three crib quilts this past spring using name brand precuts. Then came the blisters to my hands, especially the right hand fingers. All dry blisters but the peeling was awful, catching every thing I touched. My doctor guesses the fabric is the villain, since it was the only new thing in my life.

SOOO.. I will have to wash everything in the bathroom sink with Eucalan and Retayne again. Retyne has really worked on the colorfastness because I have used colorcatchers with large pieces of the same fabrics in te washing machine and the catchers were saturated with color until I washed several times.

I will wash all of it again.

feline fanatic

Yes when referring to hand dyes that are fiber reactive but even with fiber reactive dyes you still need to set the dye. For the most part any hand/home dyed fabric is going to have excess dye in it, it is the nature of the beast.

For commercial fabrics it kinda sorta does the same thing but it does not set the dye like Retayne does. So if you have a bleeder, which means that the dye used didn't properly bond with the fiber in the fabric, (there is a diffence between excess dye in a fabric and bleeding fabric and then there is crocking which is so much excess dye in the fabric it will transfer to dry surfaces with no water). If you have a bleeder, it will continue to bleed if you don't set it, even if you have washed it with Synthrapol. That is why it is recommended that if you have a suspect bleeder already sewn into a completed quilt to use synthrapol when you wash the quilt because it suspends the loose dye particles in the wash water so it doesn't settle on to another fabric. But you need a lot of water, much more than will be used in modern water efficient front loading washing machines. In these cases, I would just assume use Vicki Welshe's technique with Blue Dawn. https://www.colorwaysbyvicki.com/sav...g-quilt.html#/

Also as an aside, most modern chemical dyes are not affected by traditional old school treatments like adding salt or vinegar to the wash water.

tuckyquilter

Great advice. I'll remember this for the future.

tuckyquilter

I prewash everything. Reds, Dark Purples and Blues, as they all seem to run more than other color. I wash with a color catcher a couple of times or until the major bleeding is gone. Better safe than sorry. I do Red separately...mix the purple & blues

bearisgray

I have had at least one of every color bleed. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, turquoise, brown, black, purple -
Does not seem to matter which brand, either.