Originally Posted by
HouseDragon
Consumer Reports may be correct about catchers not working in mixed clothes loads. I wouldn't know since I separate clothes into darks, lights, and wash anything new like a red sweatshirt separately. OTOH, if C.R. is saying catchers don't work at all, they are incorrect.
I wash like-colours together. I throw in a Shout catcher and, if it's drenched in colour, I send the load through another rinse leaving in the first catcher and adding a second one.
You can really tell the difference: the first catcher will pick up even more dye and the second catcher will be lighter. Repeat until the newest catcher is white or pale.
The Shout Colour Catchers work! I rarely need to do a third rinse.
The point of the article is this...color catchers do not trap ALL the loose dyes. The white cloth that was included in with the red shirts turned pink in wash loads both with and without the color catchers added. It made no difference and if it makes no difference, why use it? CR said they did not work as advertised, and they didn't.
I seldom need a third wash for bleeding fabrics using no color catcher at all. It's the washing that gets rid of the excess dyes, not the color catchers. All they do is show you there's loose dye in the water...and merely looking at the water or adding a white wash cloth to the load will tell you that much.
You'd be far better off using Synthrapol, a product that chemically suspends loose dyes in the wash water until they are drained out of the machine, than something that claims to "trap loose dyes and prevent color runs", a dye magnet if you will.
Retayne, by the way, is not intended for use with mixed colors. It's for use on uncut fabrics, before they get made into a quilt. It will set loose dyes on any fabric in the wash load, not at all what you want for a finished quilt or a mixed load of wash.