As a long armer that quilts for others professionally, I don't want a smokey or dirty top going on my frame--because I don't want my next customer to have a quilt that smells or is dirty (what if it was white!). As far as moldy--I don't want that passed on to the next customer OR me! Also, there's plenty of lint kicked up to clog the machine, the tracks and ME--I don't need to add in dirt.
The way I understand this thread is the OP was asking what to do with donated tops that are dirty, moldy, smokey as she did not want to hand them off to a long armer. While I think we all agree that no one wants to deal with "tainted" tops, it would seem that going ahead and washing them---either they will hold togther and be quiltable, or they will fall apart and no bigger loss than if quilted and smells not able to wash out.
Why would someone donate a smelly, dirty top? I think that people realize that making quilts is a special skill, but don't understand the process (even those that make quilts may not understand the long arm process), Which makes them want to salvage a "found" quilt but not understand that an unquilted top is hard to clean. Or maybe they are just too lazy to toss it themselves---LOL!
Also--unfortunately, for non-smokers, the smoke smell is always noticeable. When one of those comes to me to be quilted, I first bag it with a bar of Irish Spring soap to absorb the odor before I quilt it. And I usually end up putting the bag it came in straight into the trash.
Last edited by quiltingshorttimer; 02-01-2016 at 08:35 PM.