Originally Posted by Mamaskeeto
My neighbors just got married in October and they are just as cute as can be. They have become my adopted children. Well here is the question, his mother made them a quilt for their wedding present and it needs to be washed because she gave it to them with cat hair all over it and also told them the colors in the quilt are going to bleed. I went to the store to get the Ritz stuff for them to wash it with but wasn't sure it Color Remover was the correct product to buy. I thought it was called something else. So now I turn to the all knowing quilters for help.
Do not use Retayne!!! It will set any bleeds!!! Retayne is suitable only when you want to set dye in an individual fabric. You never want to use Retayne on a finished quilt. As others mentioned, don't use color remover either for obvious reasons.
The color catcher sheets are okay, but they are limited in the amount of excess dye they can absorb so you would want to use quite a few for a quilt that has fabric likely to bleed. I would not trust color catchers only if the quiltmaker has said that fabrics in this quilt will bleed.
What you really need is Synthrapol. Many quilt shops carry this now, and it is readily available online. This is a liquid specifically designed to keep dye particles suspended in water so they can be rinsed away (instead of settling into fabric). I would not wash the quilt unless you can use Synthrapol. With the kind of information your neighbors got from the quiltmaker, I'd probably throw in a whole box of color catchers too. If you use color catchers, don't just throw them in with the quilt; enclose them in a delicates bag.
Also, the way you wash the quilt is very important. At no time do you want one damp fabric sitting against another damp fabric. Do you have a top-loading washing machine or a front-loading washing machine? A front-loader is safest. With a top-loader you want to hand agitate and eliminate the machine agitation cycles. I wouldn't recommend hand agitation if there is a lot of loose dye because your arms will probably come out dyed and stay that way for a week. You do not want to handwash in a bathtub because the wet fabrics will stay next to each other for too long a time.
No matter how you wash the quilt, you have to be there *immediately* to take the quilt out of the machine and start drying it so wet fabric is not laying against wet fabric too long. The quilt may be too large for a home dryer, in which case you may want to take it to a laundromat to wash and dry as you will be able to move it immediately from the washer to the dryer there. Laundromats also usually have at least one large front-loading washing machine. Another option if you wash at home is to block and lay the quilt out to dry (never exposed to sunlight, which will fade the quit!), but that is the subject of another post.
If you wash the quilt and there are some bleeds, you may be able to get the bleeds out with repeated washings with Synthrapol. However, you really want to prevent the bleeds from settling into the fabric in the first place, if at all possible, so it's really important to take precautions the first time you wash the quilt and continue to wash the quilt in Synthrapol until there is no more bleeding.