As a rule .. I never ever trust a batik not to run/or bleed. I have sewn on hundreds of yards from all the top manufactures. I can tell you the "watercolor " or Hoffman 1895 are just notorious bleeders. I have purchased the Kaufman equivilant of the watercolor... hoping for better ... nope ... still bleed. I do run into a few batiks that have not bleed , but its so unpredictable ... like I said I just don't trust any of them. I have even found that some did not bleed on the first wash... but ran on subsiquient washings... I think there was still some resist that the soap finally removed in the later washings.
Be safe .. pre treat or prewash till the color stops releasing.
Those darkest just rich colors I pretreat with Retayne... as so often prewashing or rinsing till the bleed stops ... you can "process" several times on still get a bit of a bleed. When I purchase those dark rich colors I want it to keep as much as possible... so Retayne
Some of the lighter colors... the amount of color/dye released is not so obvious .. and prewashing/rinsing can be sufficient .
I find it so interesting that some of the colors released.... are not very apparent in the fabric.
Last edited by Lori S; 06-09-2012 at 07:14 PM.