I want to share some before and after pictures with you, and a few lessons learned.
I had purchased a lovely stripe fabric quite some time ago from someone on QB. Because it was a large quantity (far more than I needed) and it came in a box ... when it arrived I simply looked in the box, said "yup - fabric" and put the box in my sewing room.
*Normally* I'm a dedicated pre-washer and fabric doesn't go into my room until it's laundered (mostly so I know that ALL the fabric in my stash is laundered).
Fast forward to today. A board member needed some stripe fabric for a project and I knew I had a lot of this so I posted a pic and offered it up. She said yes she wanted some. So I started to shake it out so I could measure and cut and I noticed several stains on it. They looks like water stains and the fabric had bled horribly (see pic #1).
So I wrote the QB member and told her what happened and that I wanted to wash it first in Synthropol lest this fabric bleed and ruin her whole quilt. So I prepared a wash and I even supplemented the hot water in my washer with 3 kettles of boiling water and added my synthropol and two color catchers.
When the wash was done I found one of the color catchers laying right on top and I couldn't believe how much color was in it!!
So .... put the kettle back on and did a second hot water and synthropol wash!! Color catcher still had color in it so .... yeah ... wash #3.
My tea kettle and water heater are developing muscles.
See pic #2 of the three color catchers from wash 1 through 3. Can you believe this??
Dried the fabric and laid it out on the table and cut 1 yard for the QB member - making sure she did not get any of the stained areas (which were all confined to 1 side of the selvedge). Then I folded the remaining fabric. I looked again at the stain and now I don't think water or bleeding was the culprit ... it looks more like a chemical stain. Bleach perhaps?? Dunno, but I'm glad I *thought* it was bleeding from a water stain because if I didn't I wouldn't have gone through such great lengths to make sure all the color came out.
See pic # 3 for the stain after laundering. No change at all. If it was bleeding from water, I would think Synthropol would have taken it out. See pic #4 for the whole fabric laid out and being folded. Now I want to cut it and use it!!
I'm sold on Synthropol. First time I've used it.
Sue