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Old 02-24-2011, 06:23 PM
  #10  
Prism99
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Western Wisconsin
Posts: 12,930
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Wow! Terrific find!

As others have mentioned, you want to repair and patch first.

Before washing, I would want to test the colorfastness of that dark blue and the red. Take a piece of white fabric, dampen it, and rub the blue and red fabrics to see if any dye transfers to the white. If you get any dye transfer, you need to take extra precautions while the quilt is in the water and also while it is still damp.

For the staining, you might want to consider using Retro Clean. Here is the website with information about it:
http://www.retroclean.com

You can wash the quilt in a top-loading washing machine as long as you do not allow the machine to agitate. Stop the machine and hand agitate by pushing down on the quilt. Change the control to "spin" to spin out soapy water. Do the same with the rinse cycle. The spin cycle is not too hard on a quilt, but the machine agitation cycle is very hard on a quilt.

I would probably use Synthrapol rather than Orvus just because I would be very concerned about that blue fabric possibly bleeding into the water. Synthrapol will help prevent it from settling into the other fabrics.

Do not machine dry. Lay a sheet out on grass in the shade outside, or indoors on carpeting. Lay the quilt on top. If outside, cover the quilt with a couple more sheets to protect it from bird droppings and the fading effects of sunlight; anchor corners and edges with stones. If indoors, there is no need to cover but you want to provide a fan to speed drying (so there is no chance of mold developing from the batting staying damp too long). Turn the quilt over at least once to ensure complete drying.
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