Prism99

Do *not* wash the top first! The risk of distortion of the fabric (from unequal shrinkage) is too big, plus unless you first baste the top to a foundation fabric you run the risk of lots of ravelled seams.

What you want to do is wait until the quilt is finished, then wash with Synthrapol. Synthrapol makes unset dye particles stay in the water so they get rinsed away instead of settling into other fabrics. To use Synthrapol, you need hot water and a top-loading washing machine. (Home front-loaders do not use enough water to make Synthrapol effective.) You may need to wash in Synthrapol several times. Watch the wash and rinse waters and keep going until there is little or no bleeding into the water.

Retayne is used on fabrics before they go into a quilt. It sets dye particles permanently into the fabric. Synthrapol is used on quilts to prevent bleeds from settling into other fabrics. You definitely do not want to use Retayne on a finished quilt, as it will set any bleeds.

Just send a note with the quilt advising cold or warm water, and enclose a few color catchers. It should be fine as long as you have washed the quilt with Synthrapol as described above.

Edit: Just want to explain why shrinkage of the fabrics is not a problem after quilting. This is because quilting binds all the fabrics to the batting, and the batting then takes control of how much the fabrics can shrink. In other words, quilting prevents individual fabric pieces from shrinking more than the batting shrinks.